THE PROMISES OF DIGITAL POLITICAL COMMUNICATION AND

THE REALITY IN SOUTH KOREA

Heike HermannsGyeongsang National University, Jinju, South Korea

THE DILEMMA: ICT AND DEMOCRACY Democratic decline? Direct democracy as a solution? Promise of networks and immediate communication and interaction Or just ‘normalization’ and reinforcement of existing patterns of

participation?

Focus of analyses – established actors or citizens Connection between the two worlds – communication and interaction

SOUTH KOREA

Facebook: 16 million (2016) Kakao story: 1 million (2016) Twitter: ? 7.5 million subscribers, 1 million active (2013!)

Kakao talk: 38 million (2015)

SOUTH KOREA PARLIAMENTARIANS ONLINE “analog politicians and digital citizens” (Min, 2008) 294 representatives:

facebook personal website

blog Twitter youtube instagram kakao story

283 282

161

242

4323 18

WEBSITES AND BLOGS 3 without any website or blog 8 without working one (together 3.7%) Blogs remain more popular than personal websites But only 8.5% update more than once a day, often links to news

items A handful updated over twenty times in the previous week Only 45% had donation collection Generally not linking to other politicians

FACEBOOKno presence

4%

per-sonal 66%

page7%

both23%

Personal site friends: 15.6% less than 1000, 20.9% up to 4500, 63.5% up to 5000 1/3 allowed friends to see more content Followers: 30.9% less than 500, 5.2% over 8000

Likes – for pages (89): 85% less than 5000, only 13 people over 5000

FACEBOOKnone13%

1-211%

3-728%

8-1321%

14-1912%

22-3311%

more than 343%

Frequent updates in the previous week

Less activity in the week parliament was sitting

78% never replied to any comments, 11 people replied more than 10 times

Top users are two prominent politicians…

Number of updates as share of total number of politicians on facebook

TWITTER 247 (84%) had account 24% had not tweeted for more than 3 months

But 66% tweeted in the previous week

60% had less than 10,000 followers, 9.8% over 50,000

Among top 10 in politics category, 2 parliamentarians, pundits and commentators more popular

75% follow less than 15,000 accounts 85% did not retweet 91% did not reply to comments

none 1-3 4-6 7-10 11-23 24-30 31-83

82

35 3832 35

10 13

Number of tweets in the previous week per represen-

tative

DIGITAL POLITICIANS? Certainly use SNS for self-promotion Age is not necessarily a factor. Younger representatives not more active

But level of engagement remains low When in session, activity was lower – so no citizen consultation sought

CAVEATS AND FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTION This is a snapshot of early 2016, things change rapidly Longer time period of activities may offer different results Interviews to clarify who posts – politicians themselves or

assistants

Quantity alone not enough – content analysis could provide more details – in particular about level of engagement

More on comments and retweets – interactive component

FINAL WORDS A new form of democracy? High expectations a result of technological determinism Challenge to representative democracy – but no radical changes Both politicians and citizens need to be open to engagement – and connect outside the virtual world as well

Research methods need to reflect this

THANK YOU! hermanns@gnu.ac.kr