• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.139-175
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• 2014

For the past 20 years, expert groups and citizens in Korea have debated on the usefulness of personalized medicine. These debates were mainly focussed on the possibility of the promise - people mainly discussed whether it was a probable future or if it was just a hype. Following Hedgecoe and Tutton(2002) who argue that it is only a 'rhetorial device', we will analyze about 9,000 news media coverages that deal with personalized medicine. With these data, we will show that the same terminology of personalized medicine have been used very differently according to the time and people who use it. Our research will show that this term has both diachronic heterogeneity and synchronic equivocality. This has happened because of the innate lack that exists in our symbolic system. Policy and governance regarding new technology is important because they provide quilting point to those slippery term/signifiant. Also we would like to carefully suggest that we might be able to call this phenomena as signifiant-politics.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.199-222
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• 2014

Functional Magnetic Resonance Angiography (fMRA) was a technoscientific innovation that allows scientists to directly view the changes made in the blood vessels of a brain. fMRA was first developed at Neuroscience Research Institute (NRI) in Korea. fMRA mainly utilizes 7 Tesla MRI technology, and NRI is equipped with the instrument. First article on fMRA was published in 2008, and two more papers in 2010 and 2012 consecutively had been published on the newly developed technique. However, fMRA is a competitive technology with existing fMRI. Both techniques capture microvascular changes in a brain, and by doing it, both techniques visualize the cognitive and affective changes. fMRI technology was introduced by Seiji Ogawa in the early 1990's and has been widely used since then. In contrast, fMRA was a newer technology and rather unknown. Developers of fMRA in NRI used series of signifiant-politics in order to make it better known to scientific community as well as public. By resetting the boundaries of existing concept of fMRI, they tried to lower the threshold of a new concept/technique. This case study shows how technoscientists use semiotic strategies governing new technology.