kaist 박한우 교수님

Social media age? Revolution for political mobilization or

another channel for interpersonal networking?

Han Woo PARKAssociate Professor

Department of Media & CommunicationYeungNam University

ICISTS, KAIST, South Korea, August 4, 2011

Objectives of This Presentation

1. To identify the underlying communication-linkage patterns among micro-blogging community members within Korea Twitter sphere using a social network data obtained from Twitaddons.com.

2. To investigate how social media is being used as a mobilization channel to interact with socio-political issues in South Korea, which will be addressed through a case study on Twitter-based group ‘Chopae’.

‘Chopae’: The mission statement of the group is about expelling ‘Cho-sun-il-bo’ which represents conservative and vested rights.

Collective Activism and the Internet

What influences on collective actions?

Collective identity formed within online groups Increase citizen responsiveness Foster stronger and larger citizen associations, encouraging

democratic participation Enable social movements to operate in the international level

(Klein, 1999; Van Aelst & Walgrave, 2002; Van Laer & Van Aelst, 2010; Ackland & O’Neil, 2010)

Collective Activism and the Internet

How?

By relaxing the constraints of space, time, and the participation cost and facilitating many-to-many communication

By exchanging practical and symbolic resources through hyperlink and online frame networks

By supporting highly motivated people to mobilize less engaged people

(Klein, 1999; Van Aelst & Walgrave, 2002; Van Laer & Van Aelst, 2010; Ackland & O’Neil, 2010)

Increased Use of Twitter in Collective Movements

Brevity in messages / mobility / pervasive access / broadcast nature (Zhao & Rosson, 2009)

Retweeting to spread Tweets to new audiences, publicly agree with someone, and validate others’ thoughts (boyd et al., 2010).

Not only for personal status update or interpersonal

relationship but for online activism

E.g. Iran’s election crisis (2009), Tunisian uprising (2010), Egyptian revolution (2011)

Literature Review on Twitter

Relational / Conversational use Typically framed Twitter within the context of interpersonal

communication by addressing the types of individual users and the use of Twitter as an enhancer of relational tiesJava et al. (2007), Krishnamurthy et al. (2008), Huberman et al. (2008) , Honeycutt & Herring (2009), Zhao & Rosson (2009), boyd et al. (2010)

Informational use Recently, focused on how Twitter is used to spread and share

information. Twitter as an electronic word-of-mouth channel or a

broadcaster of national eventsJansen et al. (2009), Hughes & Palen (2010)

Social use (for political mobilization) ?

Twitter in Korea

Twitaddons.com

Launched on Mar. 4, 2010 Added social gathering feature to Twitter Enable to create and organize an online community Automatically insert hashtags for effective communication

o Inconvenience of using hashtags, particularly in terms of Twitter use in Korea

Ranked 67th in terms of Web site traffic among worldwide Twitter applications as of June 2010 (Clientopedia.com)

Main Web Page of Twitaddons.com

Twitter in Korea

Twitaddons.com

Presence of a group organizero A group organizer who sets a mission statement and creates a

group. o Group organizers are assumed to have ‘networked power’

Networked power: “the relational capacity that enables a social actor to influence asymmetrically the decisions of other social actor(s) in ways that favor the empowered actor’s will, interests, and values (Castells, 2009, p.10).”

Considering the organizers’ uniqueness in terms of one’s existence and influence on others, their attributes and relationships with group members and followers need to be examined.

Preliminary study of Twitaddons.com

Case selection

12 Twitaddons.com groups are selected among 2,200 civic advocacy groups of Twitaddons.com identified by the search query “society and movement”

These groups were selected based on their membership (greater than 100), activeness in terms of recent Tweets, and mission statements (political, social, or commercial).

On average, these groups generated approximately 670 hashtags per month from March to September, 2010.


Political Commercial Social

Cho-pae-gong-sa 730 Blackberry Users 824 Fair Tourism 144

Support MBC 119 Info Repository for Android Phone 702 Social Innovation

Community 186

Make Common-sense Prevail 299 Official Party of HTC

Users 678 Party for Social Welfare 176

Korean HTC Users Party 501 Party for

Volunteer Activity 359

Food Car of Love 119

Cases (group, no. of members)


Attributes of group organizers

Tourism

Food Car

Volunteer

Official HTC

Blackberry

Common sense

0% 50% 100%

Followers Following

Followers vs. Following Most group organizers showed a relational type of “acquaintances” with reciprocal relationships.

“Blackberry,” “Official HTC,” and “Innovation” organizers played a role as “broadcasters” or “information sources” who gained people’s attention with “the valuable nature of their updates.”

None of the 12 organizers were “information seekers.”

Tourism

Food Car

Volunteer

Official HTC

Blackberry

Common sense

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Conversationper 100 tweets

Content Spreadper 100 tweets

Conversation vs. Content Spread



Most organizers had more replies and mentions than retweets or attributions in their Tweets.

This implies that they were more likely to have conversations than to spread content through their Tweets.

Organizers who were classified into politically-oriented groups did not show this conversational tendency.



The difference between political group organizers and others in terms of content-spreading actions was statistically significant. (t=2.440, p<0.05)

Political organizers in political groups might tend to be more sensitive than others in terms of monitoring the outside world and disseminating relevant information.

They seem to be more inclined to monitor others’ opinions and validate or publicly agree with others’ thoughts through their pervasive use of retweets.


Activities of group organizers with followers and members

Most organizers had more conversation and more content-sharing with group members than followers, allotting about 70 percent of activities in average to their relation with members. (t=1.8, p<0.1)

Having ‘networked power,’ they invested distinguished efforts to organize group members, allocating more resources to them and attempting to influence their thoughts.

16

Political Conversation Content Spreading

Chopae

MBC

CommonSense

NodeXL, Data period: Mar. – Sept. 2010

party organizers party members followers of the party organizer


Two-mode network visualization by party


17

Commercial Conversation Content Spreading

Blackberry

Android

Official HTC

Korean HTC

Preliminary study of Twitaddons.comTwo-mode network visualization by party

18

Social Conversation Content Spreading

Tourism

Innovation

Welfare

Volunteer

Food Car



Two-mode network visualization by party


Summary

Organizers on Twitaddons.com tend to have more number of followers than that of following and to prefer having conversation with followers rather than spreading content. They tend to invest more communicative effort on group members than followers.

These characteristics may contribute to organizing members and developing discussions related to mission statements.

Different from socially and commercially oriented groups, organizers of political groups are geared to spreading information and supporting one’s opinion by retweeting relevant content to members.


Summary Among political groups, ‘Chopae’ is selected for a closer

examination, because ofo Its clearly identified counterpart, Chosunilbo, against which it can

mobilize memberso Its distinguished activeness in terms of the number of hashtagso Seemingly greater devotion of its organizer to organizing members

Introduction of “Chopae” Explicitly called for the closure of ”Chosunilbo,” a national daily

in South Korea well known for its conservative, pro-government editorial agenda

Launched on May 11, 2010 730 members and 15437 hashtags generated (as of Sept., 2010)

Research Question

Mechanism of a collective actioni) Actors are “involved in conflictual relations with clearly

identified opponents.”ii) Actors are “linked by dense informational networks.” iii) Actors “share a distinct collective identity.”(della Porta & Diani, 2006, p.20)

RQ: How has ‘virtual togetherness’ developed into social mobilization? Specifically, whether shared awareness is formed among group

members, which leads to form a group identity, and how online group activities take place and mobilize people.

Method

Mixed method

This study uses mixed methods which are defined as “research in which the investigator collects and analyzes data, integrates the findings, and draws inferences using both qualitative and quantitative approaches or methods in a single study or a program of inquiry (Tashakkori & Creswell, 2007, p.4).”

While previous studies on Twitter typically chose a single method such as an interview, case study, or link analysis, the present analysis incorporates both qualitative and quantitative approaches, i.e. network ethnography and co-word analysis.

Applying a mixed method, intended is to uncover culture in the first place through close observation and configure the socio-cultural dynamics of online groups with network analysis (Howard, 2002).

Method

Network ethnography

Network ethnography or virtual ethnography adapts the traditional ethnography to explore the socio-cultural implications of the Internet (Hine, 2000; Bowler, Jr., 2010).

Ethnographic approach helps to understand online activism on Twitaddons.com which is a germinating movement, not applicable for generalization based on quantitative methods.

One of the authors enrolled in “Chopae” and observed the communicative behavior of members without disclosing one’s identity or purpose for entering the group.

Additionally, face-to-face interview is conducted with @parknife, the president of “Chopae.”

Method

Co-word analysis

Co-word analysis measures the co-occurrence of key words to describe contents in textual data (Callon et al., 1991), which can be an alternative method of content analysis for qualitative research (Biddix et al, 2009).

Through analyzing the association strengths of terms, this method allows to find patterns or clusters of discourse and to configure a conceptual map (Coulter et al., 1998).

This method is applied to identify “thematically shared” cognitive structure among group members, along with an exploratory observation of each Tweet messages.

Method

Co-word analysis

KrKwic (Korean Key Words In Context), the Korean version of Loet Leydesdorff’s FullText software, was used to analyze Korean keywords and to identify the top 20 words in terms of its occurrence frequency.

Additionally, CONCOR was adopted to cluster tweets which show close association to each other.

Results

Network structure of “Chopae”

Whole network visualized by the UCINET 6.0 NetDraw-Spring Embedding tool.

Close to a star network with several core actors who closely communicate with members.

Results

Face-to-face interview

The current president of ‘Chopae’ (@parknife) in his late thirties enrolled online-based ‘Rohsamo’ to support Roh Moo-hyun’s struggle against ‘Chosunilbo.’

In 2002, the news report from ‘Chosunilbo’ and ‘Dong-A Ilbo’ made him doubt the reliability of these dailies which seemed to tarnish Roh Moo-hyun as a pro-North Korea leftist in order to defeat Roh in the primary election of the opposition party.

At that time, Roh was identified as an “anti-establishment and anti-chosun politician (Kim et al., 2004, p.7).”

Results


He later transferred to the ‘Power of the Nation’ which spun off from ‘Rohsamo’ in 2003 and became the member of an exclusive group which was organized in 2004 and called for the elimination of ‘Chosunilbo.’

This group was chaired by Kye-nam Myung, a famous actor who publicly announced his support for Roh and who coined the group name as “Chopaegongsa.”

Experiencing the helplessness of a street promotion to persuade the public to join the movement of “Chopaegongsa,” one of its members urged to use Twitter to broaden the base of support for their argument to close ‘Chosunilbo.’

Results


Around 20 to 30 members agreed to move to the online platform, but only three of them got accustomed to using Twitter and finally created “Chopae” on Twitaddons.com in 2010.

Except the three foundational members and Kye-nam Myung as an honorary president of “Chopae,” over 900 members joined this online community voluntarily in the Twitter sphere.

@parknife felt self-efficacy through having rapid responses from members and validating each other’s thought via retweets, which rarely took place in his previous street promotion.

He was fully assured that 99 percent of members are attached to the group identity of “Chopae.”

Results


Though the timeline of Twitter passes quickly, he experienced that meaningful tweets circulate and resonate within the Twitter sphere through the relay of retweets, consolidating members’ thought and expanding their audience.

He felt that the psychological distance towards politicians seemed to be shortened by sending mentions and getting replies from political figures.

“I see hope through the activities of online community on Twitter. The growing number of “Chopae” members and our followers might get aware of our cause for anti-Chosun and opposition to the political hegemony coupled with the ‘Chosunilbo.’ I believe Twitter users will increase continuously, and more and more people will share our thoughts, finally contributing to the change of dominant hegemony.”

Results


Experiencing the helplessness of a street promotion to persuade the public to join the movement of “Chopaegongsa,” one of its members urged to use Twitter to broaden the base of support for their argument to close ‘Chosunilbo.’

Around 20 to 30 members agreed to move to the online platform, but only three of them got accustomed to using Twitter and finally created “Chopae” on Twitaddons.com in 2010.

Except the three foundational members and Kye-nam Myung as an honorary president of “Chopae,” over 900 members joined this online community voluntarily in the Twitter sphere.

Results

Formation of shared values among members

96 percent of 683 tweets were directly or indirectly related to the mission statement of the group.

Data collecting period: November 1st to 7th, 2010

Results


85 percent of total tweets, i.e. 582 tweets, contained hyperlinks which contributed to not only providing information but also amplifying messages, sharing audiences, and building identity (Park, 2003; Ackland et al., 2010).

Hyperlinks were duplicated throughout Tweet messages many times by retweeting original tweets which initiated the hyperlink connection.

These hyperlinks were frequently referring to Twitpic.com pictures which is a parody of G-20 official posters and to articles written by the Blue House, Citizen’s Coalition for Democratic Media, and online-based news media.

Results


Members shared negative tone against the government and pro-government entities such as the three conservative newspapers and conglomerates. E.g. Criticism against government’s overarching intervention to the

private sector, conglomerates’ reckless expansion of business, support for a governor’s objection to the government’s national development plan

The slogan of ‘Chopae’ to expel ‘Chosunilbo’ seemed to function as a representation of the resistance against the overall hegemony of conservative, dominant groups.

Results


Through co-word analysis, seven clusters of discourse containing two large clusters were identified.

Main two clusters among 1,618 tweets were about criticizing the Group of Twenty (G-20) and the biased news coverage of three major dailies.

The most frequently occurred words were ‘weapon,’ ‘a biography of ga-ka (mocked president),’ ‘opposition,’ and ‘mouse-20 (indicating G-20) code of practice’ among others.

These clusters of discussions are associated within three splits of cluster branches.

Results

Extension of online group activities to collective action

Online hierarchy ‘Chopae’ maintained a form of an organization constructing

hierarchy among members. 9 executives, 41 directors, and 3 heads of a labor union

The board of directors promoted members to a higher level of position based on their activity and contribution to the group by suggesting new ideas to tackle ‘Chosunilbo.’

Massive retweeting ‘Retweetings’ were in the mode of social actions to protest

against the vested rights.

Results


‘Retweetings’ were in the mode of social actions to protest against the vested rights. A tweet about mocking a list of global etiquettes issued by the

government to guide people to observe during the G-20 period was ‘retweeted’ 109 times out of 683 tweets generated within a week.

Adding one’s thought or emotional response to the ‘retweeted’ message and ‘retweeting’ that altered message to others, members seemed to form solidarity with each other by this assuring and reassuring process. Really appealing banner…retweet forever RT @_____: I would like

to share this banner. Oppose to Chosun·JoongAng·Dong-A! Oppose to Samsung! ^^ (represents smiling*) #Chopae_ http://twitpic.com/33tlyj (posted at 22.38 on Nov. 5, 2010).

http://twitpic.com/33tlyj

Results


Other online activities Some members drew and diffused online caricatures by

transforming government’s publication of the G-20 as a representation of anti-globalization and anti-capitalism.

They also created and shared 140-character novels about the President embedded with sarcasm and lampoon as well as spreading the monitoring results of the newspapers more than five times a week in average.

Offline gatherings Offline gatherings were held on a monthly basis, usually taken

initiative by the board of directors, in the form of a two-day workshop and a lecture. Some of them took place in the coalition with other groups.

Results


Action plan Increase its visibility in Twitter sphere by generating eye-

catching content as well as encouraging ‘retweets’ through the participation of at least 10 percent of total members.

Designate a day for ‘Chopae’ to implement a barrage of ‘mentions’ against ‘Chosunilbo’ in Twitter sphere.

Promote the closure of ‘Chosunilbo,’ by making leaflets, stickers, and cellular phone accessories.

Open nationwide events to publicize its argument and recruiting human resources were also in consideration as a long-term plan.

Conclusion

To explore how ‘virtual togetherness’ has developed into social mobilization, this study closely examined “Chopae.”

Based on the result of a preliminary study, “Chopae” is selected considering its clearly identified counterpart to mobilize against and its active participation in the Twittersphere.

Moreover, its organizer, with ‘networked power,’ plays a role as an ‘information source’ or a ‘broadcaster’ and appears to have an attached relationship to group members, lopsiding one’s communicative effort to members rather than followers.

Through mixed methods of network ethnography and co-word analysis, “Chopae” members were found to have shared values, i.e. negative and critical awareness against dominant hegemonic power such as the government, major national dailies, and conglomerates.

Conclusion

Online activism took place by massive ‘retweeting’ of certain issues as an online form of demonstrations, along with the creation of sarcastic novels criticizing current political problems and periodical distribution of monitoring results of the editorial agenda set by conservative dailies.

These online movements were linked to offline actions, having regular gatherings and workshops as well as shared action plans to accomplish their mission.

Experiencing the impact of online social mobilization which was not possible in his street protest, the president of “Chopae” argued that the activities of online communities will broaden the base of its supporters and finally reach the critical mass for political change.

Conclusion

Through the enhanced ability of well-connected people to achieve social goals, online community increases the opportunity to change the way we govern ourselves (Christakis & Fowler, 2009).

Rather than decaying to echo chambers of like-minded people (Sunstein, 2007), online community is changing the shape of civic engagement.

This ‘virtual togetherness’ promotes participatory culture and civic activism in our everyday life, which shows a good example of “technology-mediated social participation” with increased usability and sociability of technologies to foster vital communities (Pirolli et al., 2010).

kaist 박한우 교수님

Technology