Hostile Perception and Unsociable Social Media: Mass Polarization in South Korea

• In Event: Extremism and Polarization Online

Abstract

Despite relatively stable conditions in terms of ethnic homogeneity, freedom of religion, and successful achievement of democratization and economic development in South Korea, there exist diverse internal conflicts defined by the extensive framework of political polarization between the left and the right. The confrontation between an authoritarian state and an ambitious civil society converted into diverse overlapped conflicts in a polarized society after democratization. A recent commentary points out that Korean society is filled with all-pervading conflicts. The political polarization between the left and the right in South Korea was revealed in the public sphere in terms of intensity, frequency, and the change of discourse after democratization and the financial crisis. This study starts with this research question: why have diverse issues even seemingly unrelated to political and ideological arenas ultimately converged into ideological aspects of political polarization between the left and the right in numerous instances? This paper aims to investigate how the dynamics of political polarization in public was produced and reproduced in the context of everyday conflicts, especially on the Internet and social media. It has been said that the Internet and social media affect voters' political attitudes and boost political participation based on their attributes such as expeditiousness, convenience, and interactivity. However, they can stir up biased awareness or hostility by providing a cognitive framework for interpreting and judging specific issues. This paper focuses on how mass polarization has been produced and strengthened by investigating comments in web portal sites, representative conflicting web communities, and social media. To explain the characteristics of political polarization in online space, this study borrows the theory of Hostile Media Perception/Judgement from the field of Communication. Hostile perception often serves as a defense mechanism in interpreting information that threatens one's interests and values, and the circulation of distorted or fake news among like-minded people establishes fixed and biased interpretative perspectives. Moreover, this study also uses qualitative content analysis to examine ideological differences that appear in the text of websites and social media to research which terms continuously appeared in the text, what official and popular discourses develop, and which issues are reproduced through the new media. Ultimately, this study shows the dynamics of political polarization even in less political issues and the ways they reappeared and were reorganized in social media by reviewing some specific cases.

Author

• SUKYOUNG MYUNG, University of Hawaii at Manoa