Candlelight Protests Research Articles

News Objectivity and Political Conversation: An Experimental Study of Mad Cow Disease and Candlelight Protest

This study examines how journalistic objectivity in relation to interpersonal communication plays a role in democratic development driven by civic engagement. According to public journalists who candidly express their subjective opinions and contentious arguments in news reporting, the journalistic norm of objectivity has been blamed for causing public cynicism because it deteriorates civic participation. Focusing on the 2008 mad cow disease upheaval, an experiment was conducted to determine whether or not objective reporting actually inhibits political participation and whether or not a news article reinforcing a specific position promotes civic engagement in the candlelight protest. College students were recruited and given two types of news articles as experimental stimuli to measure their attitude towards political protest. The result indicates that the impact of news article types on the subjects’ intention to participate depends on their level of conversation with fellow citizens. For subjects who conversed frequently with others on the issue, the objective article enhanced their intention to participate in the protest. The reinforcing article enhanced participation among those who had a low level of conversation with fellow citizens. Therefore, this paper draws implications on the relationship between journalism and participatory democracy.

The Life Cycle of Newspaper Coverage of a Public Issue: Candlelight Protests against US Beef Imports in South Korea

This paper applies Downs`s concept of the issue attention cycle and Hilgartner and Bosk`s public arenas model to the competition among social problems for public attention. It draws on the recent controversy in Korea about the import of US beef to test the idea that a major issue has several issues and events related to it, and that this can explain why its life cycle is extended. The beef imports controversy involved one issue (concern about mad-cow disease) and four events (coverage of the disease on the PD Pocketbook TV show, police excess, intimidation of newspaper advertisers, and activity of the People`s Council for Countermeasures against Mad-Cow Disease). Drawing on Hilgartner and Bosk`s work, this study develops an issue competition model and uses it to estimate the decrease in media attention to this controversy. It found that the decrease in media attention resulted from competition from other issues.

New Media and Political Socialization of Teenagers: The Case of the 2008 Candlelight Protests in Korea

Abstract In this study, we examine the political socialization of teenagers by focusing on the 2008 Candlelight Protests in Korea, with particular emphasis on the implication of technological variables of modern society—in this case, new media. In the 2008 protests, we find that the protests were triggered by online communities (known as cafes in Korea) for, in part, the purposes of entertainment and amusement. The leading actors were middle and high school students; participation at both personal and organizational levels supplemented each other to amplify the impact of the protests. Survey results reveal the Internet as a primary tool that teenagers use to obtain political information, organize, and mobilize. As well, females were more aggressive in their participation, as found from the differences in Internet usage trends between teenage girls and boys. This case illuminates the potential of new media in bringing revolutionary change to the political socialization patterns of teenagers.

Mad cow militancy: Neoliberal hegemony and social resistance in South Korea

Massive protests shook South Korea through the summer of 2008. This political eruption which exhibited many novel and unexpected elements cannot be explained by pointing to basic political conditions in South Korea (strong labor unions, democratization, and so forth). Neither does the putative reason for them – to protest the new President’s decision to reopen South Korea’s beef market to the U.S. – adequately explain the social dynamics at play. In this paper, we examine the political geography of the ‘candlelight protests’ (as they came to be known), focusing in particular on their novel aspects: the subjectivities of the protesters, fierce ideological struggles, and differentiated geography. We argue that the deepening of neoliberal restructuring by the new conservative regime formed the underlying causes of these intense conflicts. In other words, the new protests should be seen as a response to the reinforced contradictions engendered by neoliberalization and a new alignment of social groups against the prevailing hegemonic conditions in South Korea. In this view, the huge demonstrations revealed vulnerabilities in conservative hegemony but failed to produce a different hegemony. To advance these claims, we examine three aspects of the protests: first, the neoliberal policies of the new conservative regime; second, the intense ideological conflicts around the media; and finally, the spatial materialization of the protests.

The Candlelight Protest and the Politics of the Baby Stroller Brigades

The Candlelight Protest and the Politics of the Baby Stroller Brigades

Korean Foreign Policy and Public Opinion: Focused on Theoretical mplications of Candlelight Protests against U.S. Beef Imports

Korean Foreign Policy and Public Opinion: Focused on Theoretical mplications of Candlelight Protests against U.S. Beef Imports

Political Participation of Teenagers in the Information Era

This study intends to examine the environments and the characteristics of political participation of teenage political participation. The 2008 Candlelight Protests of Korea is used as the case of this study. Traditionally, teenagers in Korea have been known to disengage from political affairs because they are usually worn by intense academic challenge and competition. In that sense, participation of teenagers at such a large scale shown in the 2008 Candlelight Protests of Korea can only be explained as a huge shift in political preference of teenagers and conventional social norms. In that sense, the case of 2008 Candlelight Protests of Korea has shown great implications for the political potential of new media, which is capable of revolutionizing the political socialization patterns of youth. Survey results demonstrated that the Internet had become an important tool from which the teenagers collected political information and channels which they used to organize and mobilize. Numbers also showed that the degree of the youth’s sociopolitical interests were higher than the adult’s. Another notable fact found was that female students showed more aggressive involvement than male students and this could be explained by the difference in the Internet usage pattern between male and female students. In using media, adolescent girls displayed more relationship and objective-oriented behaviors than the boys.