WEBOMETRICSINSTITUTE

Identifying Web Visibility Issues on Political Innovation System

A Case Study of South Korea’s National As-sembly Members

Yon Soo Lim & Han Woo Park WCU Webometrics Institutute

Yeungnam Universityhanpark@ynu.ac.kr

Introduction Network society describes the aspects of

modern society as an interrelated social struc-ture that is derived from the mediatized com-munication relationships specifically via the Internet.

Introduction Webometrics is broadly defined as the study

of web-based content (e.g., text, images, au-dio-visual objects, and hyperlinks) with primar-ily quantitative indicators for social science research goals and visualization techniques derived from information science and social network analysis.

Introduction Although current political communication stud-

ies examine the social influence of the Inter-net on politics, majority ignores structural (networked) properties.

This study examines the structural relation-ships between online and offline political power on the basis of network characteristics.

Political role of the Internet Normalization perspective:

Internet may reflect the traditional power structure among individual politicians.

Equalization (Innovation) perspective: Internet may reform the offline hierarchical

structure of individual politicians.

Web Visibility Web visibility as an indicator of online political power

Presence or appearance of actors or issues being dis-cussed by the public (Internet users) on the web.

Tracking web visibility is powerful way to get an insight into public reactions to actors or issues.

Recent studies indicates the positive relationships between politicians’ web visibility level and election.

Also, the co-occurrence web visibility between two politicians represents their hidden online political re-lationships based on the public perception.

Political Finance The power of money

Traditionally, the level of political finance has been regarded as a crucial indicator of politi-cal power. Public support Political activities (i.e. campaigning) resource

Although the relationship between political fi-nance and election is ambiguous, the money power is still considered an indicator of offline political power.

Research Objective The purpose of this study is to investigate the

structural relationship between the co-occur-rence web visibility network of Korean Na-tional Assembly Members and the dyadic dif-ference network of their political finance re-ceived from the public.

It will provide a comparison between online and offline political structures in South Korea as well as a theoretical argument on the polit-ical role of Internet.

Method Data

Subject: 18th Korean National Assembly members elected in April

2008. 278 members were examined (January 26, 2010).

Data 2008 Political Finance data from Korean National Election

Commission (http://www.nec.go.kr) Demographic attributes: gender & age Political attributes: consecutive incumbent, constituency,

committee, & party affiliation Gathered from National Assembly’s official site (http://

www.assembly.go.kr) and the politicians’ homepages.

Method Data gathering for web visibility (co-occur-

rence) A popular Korean-language based search engines

Naver.com & Daum.net API-based programs by WWI Search query:

Politician A’s name AND B’s name AND “ 의원 (National Assembly member)”

Collected across different web platforms including blog, image, news, and website.

Search date: April 1, 2008 – December 31, 2009

Analysis Correlation & path analysis

Identify the relationships among political finance, web centrality, (eigenvector) and vote

Quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) corre-lation Identify the structural relationships between politi-

cal finance and web co-occurrence Additionally, other dyadic difference networks

based on politicians’ attributes (gender, age, con-secutive incumbent, party affiliation, constituency, and committee) were considered

Results – Correlation & Path Analy-sisCorrelation

Spearman Correlation

Note. * p<.05, ** p<.01

1 (N=278) 2 (N=278) 3 (N=234)

1 Finance 1 0.420** 0.101

2 Web 1 0.184**

3 Vote 1

1 (N=278) 2 (N=278) 3 (N=234)

1 Finance 1 0.513** 0.090

2 Web 1 0.163*

3 Vote 1

Political finance’s indirect effect = .076

Note. ** p<.01

Results – Web Visibility (co-occur-rence)

Results – QAP Correlation

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1 Committee 1 0.004 -0.016 0.025 -0.021 -0.074** 0.045** -0.037**

2 Constituency 1 0.097** -0.007 -0.043** -0.064** 0.105** -0.119**

3 Party 1 0.027 -0.045* -0.050* 0.242** -0.094**

4 Gender 1 0.024 0.031 0.041 -0.224**

5 Age 1 0.179** -0.051* 0.049*

6 Incumbent 1 -0.060** 0.098**

7 Web 1 -0.158**

8 Finance 1

Note. * p<.05, ** p<.01

Findings Pearson correlation & path analysis:

A positive direction, indicating that politicians with a central position of the web visibility network re-ceive more financial donation than those with a peripheral position.

Online power is significantly related to the number of votes, but offline power is not.

However, the indirect impact of political finance on election can be assumed.

Findings QAP correlation

A significant relationship between web visibility and political finance networks.

The more the web visibility between politicians, the less the gap of their financial amount.

Web visibility and political finance networks are significantly related to most socio-political at-tribute networks (except gender network).

Discussion This study systematically examined the structural

relationships between online (web visibility) and offline (political finance) political power networks.

The results reveals that online and offline power structures are significantly correlated to each other.

This study supports the normalization argument that the Internet is a replication of the real world rather than the equalization perspective that the Internet will reform the offline hierarchical struc-ture of individual politicians.

Limitations and Future Studies Future studies should consider more compre-

hensive networks (e.g. public donation net-work, online supporters network, etc.).

Future studies should employ a longitudinal approach considering the network changes over time.

Future studies should consider a mixed ap-proach between qualitative and quantitative on the web visibility measure.

Thank you for your attention.