Commenters, not commentators, as citizen journalists
basic info 2007/08/01 00:51 So, by now, many of you guys probably have heard of the Taliban capturing 23 Korean Christian civilian aid workers in Afghanistan. There's already been 2 victims shot to death. One of them was a minister. There still remain 21 hostages, with nobody knowing how the crisis is going to end. I'm Korean and a devout Christian, so I have many things to say about the situation, but that's not the main point of this post. You can find more information on the situation here and here.
While I've been trying to follow what's going on in Afghanistan, my interests in media have made me notice few things.
The first is that when there's only little source of information out there, "Web 2.0 media" doesn't matter as much. The Taliban spokesperson keeps calling only the real big traditional media corps, like AP, Reuters, AFP, CBS, NHK (Japan), and KBS (Korea). The thing is that the Taliban are so good at spreading different stories through different routes that it takes a long time to gather all the information together. We're not seeing any of the citizen journalism activities with this incident at all, like we did with the Asian Tsunami, London Bombing, and Katrina. All the facts and news reported are being wired through traditional media companies.
Here's what's literally happening:
However, even with the limitations on how citizen journalism could do in terms of reporting, we're definitely seeing a huge surge of citizens participating in journalistic activities. No, it ain't blogosphere. No, it ain't Twitter, Facebook, or Cyworld. It's in the comment section of the news stories on portal sites.
The picture above is a screenshot of the comment section to a breaking news story posted on Naver, the largest portal in Korea. You can see there are already 155 comments to the news only an hour after the story was posted at 1am. If you look through the comments (all in Korean), you can see some real high-level discussions going on. It talks about the Korean government, what's wrong with the current Korean Christian churches, whether to take military actions, and harsh criticism of what U.S. is (not) doing with the situation. You can also see some comments added to each comment.
Commenter journalism, if you will, is an extremely strong force in Korea. It's so powerful that every time there's a major issue, all the mainstream media--TV, newspapers, magazines, etc.-- do not hestitate to report from these comments and say "this is what we Korean people think." It's so powerful that many of the malicious comments left on celebrities' blogs or Cyworld pages are considered one of the primary causes of some celebrity suicides. It's so powerful that all the Korean people are required to register their national IDs on those portal sites so that the government can track you down when your comment becomes influential and bad enough to cause any kind of trouble.
There's a lot more to talk about the power of comments in Korea. Strong commenting culture might be one of the reasons why blogs never took off as THE main discussion medium in Korea. But for today, I'll just leave you with this much explanation about commenting in Korea.
p.s. I apologize for the grim tone of this post. I might sound slightly angry, too. But that's how heavy the crisis is affecting the entire nation. We're extremely saddened by what's happening especially as the situation seems to grow more hopeless each day. Please join us in prayer for the 21 survivors. I believe that regardless of religion, ethnicity, country, or anything, human life should stand above them all. Thank you.
While I've been trying to follow what's going on in Afghanistan, my interests in media have made me notice few things.
The first is that when there's only little source of information out there, "Web 2.0 media" doesn't matter as much. The Taliban spokesperson keeps calling only the real big traditional media corps, like AP, Reuters, AFP, CBS, NHK (Japan), and KBS (Korea). The thing is that the Taliban are so good at spreading different stories through different routes that it takes a long time to gather all the information together. We're not seeing any of the citizen journalism activities with this incident at all, like we did with the Asian Tsunami, London Bombing, and Katrina. All the facts and news reported are being wired through traditional media companies.
Here's what's literally happening:
- Millions of Korean people are watching major Korean TV channels for breaking news night and day;
- Stories are first captured by global-scale media entities as the Taliban keep giving stories to those large companies. This is probably due to three reasons: first, they're likely to deal with the "big guns" to make sure stories travel fast; second, they're likely to deal with media companies whose main language is English. After all, I doubt any of the Taliban members actually speak Korean; last, they're likely to deal with those with big pockets as it's been known that each time they approach with a news story, they give the stories to those media companies in exchange for some six-digit dollar money. (Just think about it. How sad is it to watch the Taliban sell news about the captured who don't know when they're going to be shot in the head.)
- Korean media companies, unable to get the stories firsthand, are keeping their eyes and ears on what the global media companies are saying. Pretty much all of the breaking news on Korean channels is being reported in this manner: "according to AP, ...", "according to Reuters, ..."
- Often, some of the stories propagated through different media channels don't match with one another. Korean TV channels get really confused as they face different stories about the same thing happening. Mostly, they just go "we'll see as things settle down."
However, even with the limitations on how citizen journalism could do in terms of reporting, we're definitely seeing a huge surge of citizens participating in journalistic activities. No, it ain't blogosphere. No, it ain't Twitter, Facebook, or Cyworld. It's in the comment section of the news stories on portal sites.
Commenter journalism, if you will, is an extremely strong force in Korea. It's so powerful that every time there's a major issue, all the mainstream media--TV, newspapers, magazines, etc.-- do not hestitate to report from these comments and say "this is what we Korean people think." It's so powerful that many of the malicious comments left on celebrities' blogs or Cyworld pages are considered one of the primary causes of some celebrity suicides. It's so powerful that all the Korean people are required to register their national IDs on those portal sites so that the government can track you down when your comment becomes influential and bad enough to cause any kind of trouble.
There's a lot more to talk about the power of comments in Korea. Strong commenting culture might be one of the reasons why blogs never took off as THE main discussion medium in Korea. But for today, I'll just leave you with this much explanation about commenting in Korea.
p.s. I apologize for the grim tone of this post. I might sound slightly angry, too. But that's how heavy the crisis is affecting the entire nation. We're extremely saddened by what's happening especially as the situation seems to grow more hopeless each day. Please join us in prayer for the 21 survivors. I believe that regardless of religion, ethnicity, country, or anything, human life should stand above them all. Thank you.
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tags : Afghanistan,
Christian,
citizen journalism,
commenter,
Korea,
Media,
naver,
Portal,
Taliban,
Web