Developing network indicators forideological landscapes from the politicalblogosphere in South Korea

Han Woo PARK

YeungNam University

Korea (South)

Mike Thelwall

Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group

School of Computing and IT

University of Wolverhampton

Wolverhampton, UK

This paper investigates hyperlink patterns in the South Korean political blogosphere. Using

sampling from the blog sidebar hyperlinks of elected politicians (National Assemblymen),

the top 79 elite citizen blogs were selected. Two data sets were manually compiled during

January, 2007: (a) links between politicians and citizens, and (b) links amongst citizens.

A variety of social network analytical methods were then applied. The results show that

more top blogs have reciprocal links with politicians than have unidirectional links. The

structure of hyperlink interconnectivity suggests that the ruling Uri party affiliated blogs

are key in the blog network. For example, the blogs tied with the Uri party have a higher

centrality and are more densely connected. Network diagrams also suggest that the top

blogs are polarized by party. However, some blogs are located at the center of the Uri and

GNP clusters and are connected to both camps. In other words, there are a number of cit-

izen blogs that link to both the Uri and GNP members, because their political identities

are not completely shaped but also remain between 2 different ideologies. This suggests

that binary opposition in online political discourse is slowly changing.

Key words: political blog, blogosphere, hyperlink analysis, social network analysis,

South Korea, National Assembly, affiliation network

doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2008.00422.x

Park, H. W., & Thelwall, M. (2008/2009 forthcoming). Developing network indicators for

ideological landscapes from the political blogosphere in South Korea. Journal of Com-

puter-Mediated Communication.

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

856 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2008) 856–879 ª 2008 International Communication Association

computer-mediatedCOMMUNICATION

Journal of

Introduction

The Internet offers an opportunity for political actors (e.g., politicians, activists,

government officers) to create their own political communication networks. Thelatest developments in digital technologies particularly affect communication by

enabling new forms of political participation and citizen engagement. Since blogshave become one of the fastest growing media, large numbers of political actors

have engaged with blogging. In the 2004 U.S. Presidential election, blogs playedthe role of attracting citizens’ attention to critical issues and enhancing candidate

visibility (Williams et al., 2005). The interconnections between of these blogswere important to support the exchange of information, debate and to expresssupport.

This paper employs the social network model to measure aspects of the politicalblogosphere in South Korea, represented using a hyperlink network. The goal of our

research is to develop methods to identify underlying hyperlinking patterns of polit-ical significance between politicians’ blogs and citizens’ blogs, and amongst import-

ant citizens’ blogs. There are at least three significant reasons to focus on politicalblogs and hyperlinks in Korea.

First, official websites are largely decorative and symbolic channels of formalcommunication between political actors. For example, politicians’ websites are

often managed by professionals who may be relatively detached from inner dis-cussions within the organization. Thus, website content and services do not nec-essary represent the activities of those who are represented on the sites. However,

blogs seem to be more personal than websites and political actors are probablymore involved in blog-based activities, because blogs are relatively easy to maintain

and update.Second, web users in South Korea often express their personal opinions on topics

related to national political interests, although this is typically expressed in an emo-tional manner rather than as part of a reasoned discourse on matters of public

importance (Hague & Uhm, 2005). Online conversations and alliances betweenpolitical bloggers may be visible online through hyperlinks between them.

Finally, there are few studies about Asian blogs in the international literature

(e.g., see Bruns & Jacobs, 2006). Although the Internet and blogs have becomeembedded in the political and cultural activities of many people around the world,

previous research has tended to be concentrated in the North American andWestern European experiences. Furthermore, the study of the political dimen-

sions of the Internet in Asia draws upon a conceptual and methodologicalapproach based on a technological-deterministic point of view rather than explor-

ing the implications of the new digital medium within a contextually anchoredlens (Ho, Kluver, & Yang, 2003; Goggin & McLelland, 2008; Lim, 2007). This

study contributes to gaining a non-Western understanding of, and a social-constructivist approach to, the current and emerging impact of blogs on Koreanpolitical practice.

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Literature review: Related studies

This section begins with background information about online political campaign-

ing in Korea. Related studies on political blogging in general are then discussed aswell as the role and use of blogging technologies in online political communication.

Finally, some relevant statistics and trends related to the Internet and blogging inKorea are introduced.

Online campaigning in South Korea

Online campaigning in South Korea started in the 2000 National Assembly electionwhen candidates were allowed to use the Internet (e.g., websites). A second wave ofweb campaigning was conducted during the 2002 presidential election. The current

president Moo-Hyun Roh used campaign tactics and strategies with a specific focuson the mobilization of the reform-minded younger population via cyberspace. The

impact of Internet-mediated communication practices on political networking wasunprecedented within South Korea and apparently successful for the Uri party (Lee,

2004). More recently, the Internet has also served as the primary medium to help theruling Uri party win in the 17th National Assembly election in April 2004 (Hague &

Uhm, 2005; Hara & Jo, 2007; Kim & Park, 2007).The Korean Social Science Data Center’s (KSDC, 2004) national survey after the

2004 National Assembly election found that emergent technologies had becomeembedded into Koreans’ lives in different ways (N = 1,500). According to theKSDC’s results, 44.0% of the ruling Uri Party’s supporters used the Internet every

day compared to 16.4% for their GNP opponents. While only 26.6% of those whowere favorable to the Uri party had never been online, nearly half of the GNP

supporters (49.2%) had never used the Internet.Since the 17th Assembly members are relevant to the current paper, the election

results are briefly explained. Two major parties and two minor parties succeeded inwinning seats in the 2004 election: the ruling Uri Party (Uri, Yeo-lin-uri in Korean),

the major opposition Grand National Party (GNP, Han-na-ra in Korean), and twominor opposition parties: the Democratic Labor Party (DLP, Min-joo-no-dong inKorean) and the Democratic Party (DP, Min-joo in Korean) which had earlier

changed its name from the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP). The Uri andthe GNP parties roughly correspond to the Democratic and Republican parties in

the U.S. system, respectively. These two parties occupied more than 270 out of the299 seats in the Assembly. The DP is the former ruling liberal party, while the DLP

has progressive (left-wing) policies. A few members are affiliated with small partiesor are independent.

Since the 2004 national election, new Internet technologies have been rapidlyadopted and web-based personal media have brought challenges for the regulators.

The Singapore government banned its citizens from using RSS (Really Simple Syn-dication) feeds, a major blog technology, for political purposes in the last election(Skoric et al., 2007). Similarly, the National Election Committee (NEC) of South

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Korea launched a full-scale crackdown on possible irregularities in textual informa-tion and audio and visual clips involving civil service elections on 25 April 2007

ahead of the 19 December presidential election. In particular, the NEC set guidelinesfor unethical practices with homemade Internet video, widely known as UCC (user-

created content) in Korea.Hyperlinks have been used to reflect or cement alliances between political actors

and to amplify their voices in cyberspace (Park, Thelwall, & Kluver, 2005). The well-

known Loose Change video about the September 11 conspiracy is a good examplebecause more than 10 million people watched this movie in 2006. This rapid under-

ground diffusion would not have been possible without hyperlinks and other formsof information sharing. Links in blogs, as Reynolds (2006) emphasizes, let people

experience a new communication world in a way that traditional media can’t. Ofcourse, the link isn’t a guarantee of collaborative social ties between the linker and

linked – the relationship may be hostile. In networked politics, successful onlinecampaigning can be helped by creating and maintaining ties with ‘smart crowds’.Political actors, including politicians, are trying to maximize the power of

digital media by distributing video clips, photos, and news favorable to them onthe blogosphere.

Political blogosphere as networked communication space

Blogs, personal websites that serve as publicly accessible online journals, havebecome a new communication channel for politics. Politicians, previously reliant

upon the mass media (e.g., broadcasting), can now speak and listen to their con-stituents through blogs (Coleman, 2005). Citizen reporters and professional journal-

ists are increasingly setting up their own blogs in order to report politicalinformation and news commentaries. Ordinary citizens, who wish to connect toother people with similar interests, also use blogs to communicate and build inter-

personal networks (Reynolds, 2006).In parallel with the rise of political blogging, there has been research into the

political characteristics of the contemporary blogosphere, for example, gender andage distributions of blog authors for some types of blogs (e.g., filter and knowledge

blogs) which has shown that the majority of blogs are personal diaries, even thoughthe most publicized bloggers engage with the news in some way (Herring et al.,

2005). In a review of political blogging research, Bahnisch (2006) notes that scholarlyinterest in the way that blogs influence politics and the political process is anothersignificant trend. For instance, some political blogs such as the ‘‘Daily Kos’’ helped

Democratic candidates to receive half a million dollars in donations during the 2004U.S. presidential campaign. Johnson (2006) examined the role of the major political

blogs, the conservative ‘‘Instapundit’’ and the liberal ‘‘Eschaton,’’ during the U.S.2004 presidential debates. The blogs not only fact-checked coverage of the New York

Times on the debates between candidates but also presented their own analysis. Thisreveals that political blogs can attempt to fulfill the key journalistic roles of gate-

keeper and government watchdog.

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One particularly important issue in the literature on political blogging concernsthe hyperlink-mediated networking power of blogs. A blogosphere, created by a col-

lection of blogs, can serve as an online social space. It is known that the wholeblogosphere has a globally sparse but locally dense linking structure (Marlow,

2006). This blogosphere property works well for the epidemic-like diffusion ofinformation. A-list blogs, the best-known (most read, most linked to) blogs, couldplay a key role in triggering or mediating information diffusion within this.

The social role of hyperlinking between blogs has been discussed by Drezner andFarell (2004) in one of the early studies of political blogging. They examined the

structural characteristics of mass discussions and information exchange in the U.S.political blogosphere. A few hub blogs had considerable power to promote small

pieces of information and to channel public attention to minor blogs. According toHerring et al. (2005) there are a few central blogs with many incoming links from

others. Thus, hub blogs contribute to shortening the ‘distance’ between blogs ina massively connected blogosphere. To give a concrete example, in Bruns’ (2007)case study of Australian–born Guantanamo detainee David Hicks, Australian

domestic blogs were more strongly engaged in debating news and politics on thecase than those outside Australia. A strong and sustained engagement with this case

by Australian top political blogs played an important role in diffusing blog discus-sions in spite of the lack of serious coverage of the case in the mainstream media.

Another feature of A-list blogs is their connections with other blogs sharingsimilar political stances and ideologies. Previous research suggests that political blog

discourse tends to be clustered around a handful of sites run by A-list bloggers withshared political orientations. Studies conducted in the U.S. (Adamic & Glance, 2005;

Hargittai et al., 2005), Canada (Elmer et al., 2007), and South Korea (Park & Kluver,2008) confirm that political subdivisions tend to emerge in blog networks. Partici-pation rarely takes place across ideological borderlines and political issues. More

importantly, the ego-network of A-list blogs seems to contribute to polarizationamong ideological lines.

The networking power of A-list blogs through trackbacks, blogroll links, andcitations can also increase the visibility of marginal political actors when they get

noticed by these influential bloggers. Nevertheless, the role of hyperlinks betweenblogs has been relatively little studied and so their real impact remains unknown. For

example nothing is known about how common it is for blog reader to follow thevarious types of links in political blogs.

Blogging and hyperlinking

Hyperlinks permit users to select and reference anything, and so the interconnectiv-

ity pattern of hyperlinks between websites can reveal aspects of the sociocommuni-cation landscape of the web. Although the hyperlink analysis of websites has been

established in the information and social sciences (Park & Thelwall, 2003; Rogers,2004; Thelwall, 2004), this is inadequate for hyperlinks in the blogosphere because

there are several types that are unique to blogs.

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One early study about hyperlinking practices in blogs provides interesting results.During the 2004 U.S. campaign, Williams et al. (2005) compared hyperlink desti-

nations of official websites and the blogs of George W. Bush and John Kerry. Officialsites were much more likely to hyperlink to promotional materials (e.g., campaign-

related products), political advertisements, and donation requests than blogs. Incontrast, when linking to external sources, the most common targets of blog linkswere blog authors’ official websites and mass media sites. Blogs were judged to be

supplemental to other modes of communication.Another example comes from an interview analysis by Nardi et al. (2004), who

found that, compared to websites, interviewees perceived their blogging activities(e.g., writing, hyperlinking, archiving) as more dynamic and somewhat more per-

sonal. Blogs often served as a place to post and share thoughts about news andmagazine stories. In this regard, Halavais (2006) claimed that blogs are particularly

useful for drawing attention to what Merton (1987) calls ‘‘specified ignorance’’; thatis, a new awareness of what is not yet understood but is worth knowing, as tentativeideas can receive immediate and intensive feedback. Blogging in practice often

includes hyperlinks to other blogs. Halavais (2006) believes that the hyperlink net-work among blog authors can represent a snapshot of conversations between

bloggers.In a recent article, Schmidt (2007) argues that ‘‘communities of blogging prac-

tices’’ are framed by the three structural dimensions of rule, relation, and code. Interms of hyperlinks, bloggers have a networking rule that guides them to express

a social tie to another person through different technical means, for example hyper-links within a posting or a blogroll, or adding a comment to another blog. He also

claims that establishing relations between blogs occurs via hyperlinks. In particular,blogroll links can convey important aspects of social relations, such as being a sign ofpersonal acquaintance or friendship, professional affiliation, or expressing consent

(or dissent) with the linked blog.As discussed above, the underlying architecture of the blogosphere is partly

structured by the use of hyperlinks. The analysis of hyperlink connections betweenblogs can thus be a starting point for the understanding of blogging practices.

Use of the Internet and blogs in Korea

According to an International Telecommunication Union (2006) report, the adop-tion of digital technologies in South Korea is widespread. Korea had the world’ssecond highest broadband access rate (25.20%) and about 80% used a mobile phone

in 2005. By December 2006, the National Internet Development Agency of Korea(NIDA, 2007) announced that there were 34.12M Internet users (74.8%), a 1.11M

increase from the previous year. Moreover, as of December 2006, an incredible39.6% of Korean Internet users had published a blog (including a Korean style

‘‘minihompy’’ blog) and the most active blog user age group was the twentysometh-ings (68.2%) (NIDA, 2007). A total of 47.4% of Korean netizens claimed to have

visited other people’s blogs. A minihompy ( ) is in fact a location within the

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social network site Cyworld, which is similar to MySpace (boyd & Ellison, 2007).This location includes blog functions in addition to other features, such as friending

( ) and a photo gallery. Its distinctive attribute is that an owner’s avatar ‘lives’ ina virtual room in the site.

However, not all of those who use the Internet engage in putting news andpersonal commentaries together. According to Edelman (2007) about 43% of Koreansread blogs more than once a week (France: 22%, UK: 23%, USA: 27%). A total of 63%

of Korean blog readers identified themselves as social influencers and read blogs 3.06times per week. Social influencers are those who have taken part in at least three

activities (e.g., email or call politicians, attend political events or public hearings, serveas a public committee member, petition, make a public speech or media contribution).

This is very high compared to other countries (France: 37% with 0.97 blog readings,UK: 35% with 1.11 blog readings, USA: 34% with 1.20 blog readings). The survey was

conducted across 1,000 people during November 2006.Some blogs have been very active in political discussions. Park and Jankowski

(2008) found that popular political blogs run by lay persons in Korea explicitly

express a political stance both as producers and as readers of content. For example,their blog titles are self-expressive and strongly imply ideological affiliations in

Korean politics. As Reynolds (2006, pp.117–118) states, a personal voice is importantfor good blogging and the selection of hyperlinks helps to represent this.

Research question

Given the rising influence of online networking in Korean politics, this paper focuseson influential citizen blogs in South Korean politics, addressing the following

research question. What hyperlink patterns exist between influential citizen bloggersand politicians in South Korea?

Methods: Network data and measurement

Methods for detecting A-list blogs

There are several types of hyperlink in blogs. A blogroll link is a blog sidebar hyper-

link to other blogs that author reads or otherwise recommends. A content link isa hyperlink embedded in a post or commentary. A navigation link directs visitors to

internal blog features. A paid link is a hyperlink to advertisers (e.g., Google ad-sense).Data on social networks may be gathered for all linking elements of a blog, but this

research examines only blogroll links. Amongst these blog hyperlinks, a list of blog-roll links to other blogs is of particular interest to blog researchers since they can

provide clues about the blogger’s political agenda and affiliations (Schmidt, 2007).Most blog link studies have dealt with hyperlinks in blogrolls because these links

are set up and maintained by bloggers themselves perhaps for regular navigation to

linked blogs. Blog hyperlinks may be tokens of the blog producer’s communicationnetworks, informal associations with the other blogs. But, should blog hyperlinks, as

social ties, be regarded as strong or weak ties? (Granovetter, 1973). People with

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strong ties tend to have mutual obligations, and give support and affection whenothers are in need. On the other hand, social networks in cyberspace generally tend to

be weaker ties by nature (Haythornthwaite, 2002). Since online ties often do notreflect a long-term acquaintanceship, mutual duties, social commitment, and visual

information, and even rely at times on false names, they are typically easier to break(Adamic & Adar, 2005). However, the classification of online relationships in cyber-space into strong or weak ties can be constrained by a number of contextual factors.

People with strong ties are prone to employ more kinds of communication media tomeet their informational and emotional needs, particularly when they are tempo-

rarily unavailable and geographically distant (Kim et al., 2007). In this case, onlinetechnologies such as blogs often are used as the functional equivalent of other

communication methods, because of the asynchronous, cheap nature. Thus, thestrength of online ties can vary according to the specific context under investigation.

Furthermore, the characteristics of offline ties can be reflected in online behavior.For example, since politicians sometimes link to one another in their websites, thequality of e-relationships conveyed via blogroll links can be partially attributed to

traditional bonds from primary group affiliations such as gender, locality, and party.We first identified Assembly members that use the Naver.com blog service:

Naver.com is the most popular web portal in South Korea. According to Park andJankowski (2008), 124 out of 299 National Assembly members maintained personal

blogs during July 2005. The majority, 115, used the Naver blog service. Thus, wedecided to focus on the Naver in this study. More specifically, we visited the official

websites of Assembly members and collected their blog URLs. Search engines werealso used to trace blogs. An identification process starting from the list of already

identified blogs was also employed. We excluded from our analysis a few inactiveblogs with no posts after the initial posting.

To find influential citizen bloggers, we used quasi-snowball sampling from the

blogroll links of the 124 Korean National Assembly members, finding a total of 1,904citizen blogs. Of these, 79 blogs were linked more than three times, forming our top

linked ‘elite citizen bloggers’ set. Two data sets: (a) blogroll links between politiciansand citizens, and (b) blogroll links amongst elite citizens were manually compiled

during January 2007. Tables 1, 2, and 3 give a detailed overview of the samplingprocedure and data. Note that not all of the politicians linked to one or more

citizens. The average number of hyperlink connections to citizens was 2.85 witha standard deviation of 5.96 and a range of 0-40 links. Some politicians linked toother politicians, parties, or NGOs on their blogrolls but any such links were

ignored.

Social network analysis design

Social network analysis is a set of methods to identify interconnectivity patterns

amongst individuals (also called ‘‘nodes’’) based on shared attributes (Hanneman &Riddle, 2005). Several techniques are able to reveal relational features amongst com-

ponents within a social system under investigation, and between groups based upon

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the shared attributes of group members. For this study, social network analysis wasperformed using standard routines from UciNet for Windows (Borgatti, Everett, &

Freeman, 2002).In this paper, we concentrate on two primary analytical techniques for measuring

social relationships represented by (a) blogroll links between politicians and citizens,and (b) blogroll links amongst citizens. First, for the data set (a), ‘‘positional’’properties of particular network actors were identified through a network analysis

of citizens’ affiliations with politicians. Positional approaches were employed inorder to determine citizens’ tie-strengths with politicians and political characteristics

of citizens.The tie-strengths of citizen blogs were classified according to their interaction

types. Citizens having mutual links with a National Assembly member were catego-rized as ‘‘strongly bonded’’. Those which did not link back to Assemblymen were

called ‘‘weakly bonded’’. Amongst the 79 elite blogs, 47 are strongly bonded but only32 are weakly bonded. Next, the partisanship of the elite blogs was examined with an

Table 1 The sampling procedure for citizen blogs

Stage Action Method No. of blogs

1 Systematic identification Blog-using politicians traced

via their official sites and multiple

search engines

124 politicians

2 Snowball sampling Layperson’s blogs in the blogrolls

of the politicians

1904 citizens

3 Purposive sampling Citizens linked to more than

3 times (a set of politically active

actors)

79 citizens

4 Making the full-network Information about each citizen’s

links to all others collected

79 citizens

5 Dissecting the

full-network

79 citizens divided into groups based

on link reciprocity between citizens

and politicians

47 citizens

Table 2 Distribution of citizen blogs according to linking members’ party affiliation

Party No. of politicians

No. of citizens

linked by politicians

No. of elite

citizens linked by politicians

Uri 48 751 60

GNP 69 1127 45

DLP 5 81 10

DP 1 13 0

Others 1 0 0

Total 124 1904 79

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event-based approach depending on involvement in selected activities. The primarycriterion for the identification of partisanship was the existence of a hyperlink

between a citizen and a politician. In support of this, Soon and Kluver (2007), intheir analysis of Singaporean political organizations, found that hyperlinks served as

new type of political marker because link network structure, to some degree,matched ideologies. Sunstein (2007), in his recent book, Republic.com 2.0, empha-

sizes that links embedded in the website need to be analyzed as a form of politicalaction in the digital age. Table 4 summarizes the distribution of strongly and weakly

bonded blogs by partisanship.Second, for data set (b), relational properties of civic actors based on network

structure are examined through a whole network analysis. For the relational analysis,

a ‘‘who-links-to-whom’’ matrix amongst the 79 citizen blogs was made. Relationalnetwork analysis is particularly useful when employed with a positional approach.

The 79 * 79 matrix illustrates social connectedness within a single set of networkactors. While positional (affiliation) network analysis is restricted to outgoing links

of network actors, relational (whole) network analysis yields insights into internalconnectedness represented in all links between actors. The frequently used indicators

and techniques in this study are as follows.

Table 4 Party connections of the 79 elite blogs

Items Strongly bonded Weakly bonded Total

Uri 18 11 29

GNP 11 8 19

DLP 2 0 2

Uri 1 GNP 11 13 25

Uri 1 DLP 3 0 3

GNP 1 DLP 1 0 1

Uri 1GNP 1 DLP 1 0 1

Total 47 32 79

Table 3 Distribution of inlinks to citizen blogs according to linking members’ party

affiliation

Party Politicians Links to all 1,904 citizen blogs

Links to the 79 elite

citizen blogs

Uri 48 906 165

GNP 69 1294 175

DLP 5 89 14

DP 1 13 0

Others 1 0 0

Total 124 2302 354

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Degree centrality measures the number of relationships involving individualactors; in this case, citizen blogs (Freeman, 1979). Degree centrality can be separated

according to the direction of relationships between actors. Indegree refers to thenumber of direct connections from others in the network. Outdegree means the

number of others to which a blog links. Centrality usually comes with its sisterindicator ‘‘centralization’’ that shows the extent to which relationships in networkare associated with a central actor. A high centralization suggests that the central

actor is influential in shaping the overall network. While centrality seeks to reportindividual attributes, ‘‘density’’ measures the internal relations of the whole network.

Density is the number of existing connections amongst actors divided by theirpossible connections (Wasserman & Faust, 1994).

Finally, citizen blogs are clustered naturally by the positional approach describedearlier and it is useful to investigate the interrelations between those subclusters

within the larger network. In this regard, the frequency of link ‘‘exchange’’ betweensubclusters was measured, and their link ‘‘traffic’’ was visualized with a simplediagram.

Analysis and Results

Positional affiliation network analysis

The affiliation network of the 47 strongly bonded elite blogs is shown in Figure 1.There are apparently substantial differences in civic involvement between the ruling

and opposition parties. The percentage of citizens affiliated with the ruling Uri partyis large in comparison to the opposition GNP, confirming previous findings with

different data sets (Park & Jankowski, 2008). Using a similar approach, Park andJankowski (2008) found that the progressive Uri camp in South Korea had beenconsistently better organized than the opposition in terms of the number of blog

hyperlink connections after two major elections.As described in the method section, the assignment of individual citizen blogs to

partisanship categories was made according to the existence of reciprocal hyperlinksbetween politicians and citizens. In order to check this assumption, a content analy-

sis was made of several citizen blogs’ posts and titles, and text accompanying theirblogroll links. One of the common features used by bloggers to differentiate them-

selves from others is their blog titles. In regard to posts, Korean bloggers using theNaver blogs under investigation are able to block strangers from reading their blogposts, although their post titles are generally open to everybody.

One GNP-affiliated citizen, ‘‘lionrise,’’ with a fairly high centrality gave his/herblog a striking label, ‘‘devotion to my country and people, Dear Geun-Hye Park’’.

Miss Park is the former president of the opposition GNP party and is a daughter ofthe military dictator Jeong-Hee Park who got assassinated during his term. The

‘‘lionrise’’ blog was also included in the category of strict and legitimate conservativeson the side bar in another GNP blogger ‘‘jskim8875’’ whose ID represents another

Korean conservative politician Jong-Phil Kim. Compared to the GNP, the ruling

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Uri-tied blogs frequently attempted to address public concerns about the reformingpolicies of incumbent president Roh. For example, one Uri blogger ‘‘tank1801’’

asserted the importance of listing and removing Korean elites with positions abovemedium ranked-governmental/military officer and who were in a close relationship

with Japan during colonization period. According to the writings of some Uri blog-gers, this government program was necessary to restore national self-esteem. Fur-thermore, as this specific issue had become popular, blog conversations were shaped

along similar ideological lines because the ruling party tried to include deceasedpresident Park in this pro-Japanese tier. Another Uri blogger (asraee) identified

him/herself as an Uri supporter by setting up a noticeable link to Mr. Roh’s presi-dential office. This blogger also packed in their blogroll a set of blogs that (s)he

describes as ‘‘the best Roh people’’. The DLP is well known for its social and dem-ocratic policies. Individuals (e.g., since4299) associated with the DLP strongly pro-

vided their own party preference using self-referential framing of the anti-Americanfighter’s issue stances with respect to the expansion of the U.S. army base in Korea.

Interestingly, the current results partly contrast with a study (Park & Kluver,

2008) of online networks amongst the blogs of South Korean politicians alone. Thestudy showed that conservative GNP members were highly visible and noticeable in

cyberspace in terms of technology adoption rates. After the GNP lost the 2002

Figure 1 The affiliation network of the 47 strongly bonded elite blogs.

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presidential and 2004 national elections, its politicians increasingly created their ownwebsites or became concerned with online political activities and services, either to

complement offline weakness or to strengthen their competitive positions online.Park and Kluver (2008) found that there was a concerted use of blogs and other

associated technologies by GNP members. Hyperlinking by GNP members was alsomore extensive than by Uri members. The findings from the current study show,however, that this is not true in the context of affiliation between politicians and

citizens.Another significant finding from the affiliation network analysis is that several

blogs are located at the center of the Uri and GNP clusters and are connected to bothcamps. There are a number of citizen blogs with a dual ‘‘partisanship’’ as they link to

both Uri and GNP members. A qualitative investigation of these blogs revealsthat three of the citizen bloggers are professional journalists (jay1124, rogos0119,

scaletqueen1) with a relatively long experience of blogging. There are also prospec-tive politicians (cys2007, wkh55), a progressive poet (imim0123), and some lay-persons. We were not able to identify the remaining bloggers due to a lack of

information on their blogs. Judging from their blog titles and posts, the majorityof blogs with dual partisanship are politically engaged citizens that provide quick

comments on ongoing political events. However, it was not possible to determine ifthey have formal offline party affiliations. Presumably their ‘‘dual partisanship’’ had

the purpose of portraying impartiality or the possession of influential friends.Table 5 shows that blogs affiliated with the ruling Uri party are very active online

in terms of informing and networking. Activity was measured using four items: posts,citations, hyperlinks, and visitors. Since these four items do not have a Gaussian

normal distribution, the mean is not a good measure of average and so the medianis used instead. Each item is defined as follows:

l Posts: total number of posts in the blogl Citations: total number of citations from other bloggers as measured by inlink

frequenciesl Blogroll links: total number of outgoing blogroll linksl Visitors: total number of visitors as recorded by visitor counts

What is important about the findings of this additional analysis? It seems that the

political blogosphere of Korea is constructed in such a way that the Uri party isattempting to gain a competitive advantage through hyperlink-mediated associa-tions with its supporters. The Uri-related bloggers form an independent group

separate from the remaining party groups, as the former was the most active infor-mation content providers among all political actors and played as dissemination axes

of blog commentary. The Uri-affiliated citizen blogs functioned as platform, whereasthe Uri politicians’ blogs were placed firmly on the agenda of the blogosphere and

reached a number of civic bloggers in an immediate way. In past elections, Uri socialrelationships established through online communication channels were used as

interactive and participatory tools. Similarly to U.S. Democratic candidates in

868 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2008) 856–879 ª 2008 International Communication Association

2004, the extension of the online network may have reduced election costs for Roh.In summary, the analyses of blog activity and engagements, when taken with link

network indicators, reveals that the Uri-tied blogs, as opinion leaders and agendasettlers, benefited from this technology in the sense of involving bloggers in the

ruling party’s domain.

Relational whole network analysis

A whole network analysis of the 79 citizen blogs was conducted to examine their

interconnectivity.Tables 6 and 7 list the top 10 blogs in terms of indegree and outdegree values.

Both incoming and outgoing blogroll links are connected to progressive and central

blogs affiliated with either the Uri or the Uri and GNP parties. There are no con-servative GNP-only blogs in these first-tier groups.

Figure 2 illustrates the hyperlink relationships between the 79 elite blogs. Themost linked blog, myhong0910, is located at the center of the whole network map.

Also, this diagram shows the centrality of blogs favorable to the ruling Uri party.

Table 5 Indicators of online social capital for the 47 strongly bonded elite blogs

Partisanship Statistics Posts Citations Blogroll links Visitors

Uri (N = 18) Min 96 44 27 7,256

Max 4,994 14,520 714 2,376,694

Median 878 803 124 51,278

GNP (N = 11) Min 26 25 11 10,219

Max 4,261 1,108 212 705,826

Median 517 143 55 24,167

DLP (N = 2) Min 347 129 176 16,586

Max 1,118 510 242 40,761

Median 733 320 209 28,674

Uri 1 GNP (N = 11) Min 87 10 16 6,054

Max 22,361 35,904 3,024 4,828,229

Median 1110 514 193 110,651

Uri 1 DLP (N = 3) Min 60 10 26 2,852

Max 334 336 266 34,639

Median 197 217 78 14,473

GNP 1 DLP (N = 1) Min 42 16 39 7,047

Max 42 16 39 7,047

Median 42 16 39 7,047

Uri 1GNP 1 DLP (N = 1) Min NA 422 85 162,196

Max NA 422 85 162,196

Median NA 422 85 162,196

Overall Min 26 10 11 2,852

Max 22,361 35,904 3,024 4,828,229

Median 675 419 117 37,832

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2008) 856–879 ª 2008 International Communication Association 869

Additionally, a system analysis of the network yields useful information forunderstanding the structural characteristics of the network. The low density value

0.0409 indicates that the network of the elite blogs is sparse. Only 4% of possible tiesexist in the blogrolls. Inbound and outbound network centralizations are 15.36%

and 19.23% respectively. These relatively moderate measures reveal that this networkforms a distributed chain shape rather than a hub-and-spoke topology. This suggeststhe dominance of horizontal networking. Ten blogging citizens were found to be

isolated, with no hyperlinks to and from other members in the network.

Combined network analysis

Next, we used a combined network analysis to seek hidden relations amongst the 47

strongly bonded elite blogs. In Figure 3, the links between the 47 blogs (expressed asthin and light gray lines) are inserted within the affiliation network diagram. Given

that blogroll links are used as a surrogate measure of ideological affiliation, note that

Table 6 Top 10 citizen blogs in terms of outdegree centralities

Rank Blog Partisanship OutDegree

1 ssk3169 Uri 1 GNP 18

2 ek3906 Uri 1 DLP 15

3 josjosjos Uri 1 GNP 14

4 cys2007 Uri 1 GNP 13

5 asraee Uri 12

6 since1934 Uri 1 DLP 12

7 since4299 DLP 12

8 corona6911 Uri 10

9 snhope Uri 10

10 wiminbk615 Uri 9

Table 7 Top 10 citizen blogs in terms of indegree centralities

Rank Blog Partisanship Indegree

1 myhong0910 Uri 15

2 kwcl Uri 1 GNP 11

3 josjosjos Uri 1 GNP 9

4 doolyking Uri 1 GNP 9

5 haguyha Uri 8

6 rogos0119 Uri 1 GNP 8

7 lucky31 Uri 1 GNP 7

8 christen78 Uri 7

9 asraee Uri 7

10 soonerpark Uri 7

870 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2008) 856–879 ª 2008 International Communication Association

the blogs on the left and central area in Figure 4 have a number of transverse linksfrom one to another.

On other hand, the opposition GNP-affiliated citizen blogs do not have a highdegree of hyperlinking amongst themselves. This suggests that blog technology helps

the progressive Uri party-affiliated citizens extend their information potential anddeepen their alliances. Reform-minded citizens are perhaps exploring the ways socialnetworking technologies, including blogs, can help build relationships. During this

process, hyperlinks have perhaps become a channel for signifying political affinityand connecting to related information.

For the additional analysis, the 47 strongly bonded elite citizen blogs were orga-nized according their party affiliations. The results show a discrepancy between the

ruling Uri party-affiliated blogs and opposition blogs. Interestingly, there are 34 and2 hyperlinks within the Uri and GNP parties respectively. Nearly all blogs with dual

partisanship (Uri & GNP) send hyperlinks to Uri citizen blogs. Uri and GNP-tied

Figure 2 Blogroll interlinking of the 79 elite blogs.

l Uri – Yellow, GNP – Blue, DLP – Light green, DP – Red, Uri1GNP – Sky blue, Uri1DLP

– Purple, GNP1DLP –Pink, Uri1GNP1DLP–Grey. Node size is proportionally bigger

according to node indegree. Circle nodes are strongly bonded blogs and square nodes

are weakly bonded blogs.

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2008) 856–879 ª 2008 International Communication Association 871

bloggers (11 citizens) had 24 out of 50 hyperlinks to Uri blogs. This is more than theblogroll links within the group. Examining reverse linking, Uri blogs (18 citizens)

send 14 links out of 59 to Uri and GNP blogs. This suggests that the overall level ofnetwork integration within the Uri party is extremely high. These results are shown

Figure 3 Blogroll interlinking of the 47 elite strongly bonded blogs.

Figure 4 The strength of linking amongst the party groupings.

l See Figure 2 for the colors.

872 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2008) 856–879 ª 2008 International Communication Association

in Figure 4. Arrowheads represent the direction of blogroll link traffic and arrowwidths are proportional to link counts. The more self-links, the bigger the node.

Discussion

This research suggests that blogs have become a popular channel for political com-munication whilst also being interwoven with many political actors. As a whole,

online interactions via blogs fill communication gaps between the ruling Uri partymembers and their core supporters. Although the Internet sometimes enhances only

weak online ties, the progressive Uri camp seems to be obtaining political andorganizational capital from the Internet in an affordable and convenient way. With

a relatively homogeneous population sharing ethnicity and language and with a highproportion having broadband access, the political discourse provided by A-list blogs

can potentially enjoy widespread penetration. At the time of data collection, the Uriparty and President Roh were becoming unpopular due to Roh’s frequent verbalslip-ups concerning important national issues. Despite this, the ruling Uri-tied cit-

izen bloggers who are influential in the blogosphere seem to provide significantsupport.

However, some finding suggests that influential A-list blog authors are individ-uals who have become disenchanted with the Uri party and several bloggers have

been drawn either to a politically central position or to the conservative camp. Sincethe National Assembly election in 2004, the importance of ideological issues has been

declining among the young and progressive citizens who were the primary support-ers of the ruling Uri party (Kim, Choi, and Cho, 2008). Their apparently misguided

reform policies and rapidly increasing unemployment have clearly caused problems.This might have lead to a situation in which the importance of blogosphere activistsin rallying support is even greater- particularly for the more centrally placed blog-

gers; conversely, a disinterested population may no longer want to read blogs aboutpolitics.

Nevertheless, bloggers are mainly polarized by political stance in South Korea.New media technologies may thus reinforce certain political and organizational

advantages of the central conservatives, just as this position was exploited byprogressive liberals in the past. As increasingly many individuals are now able to

participate in political discussions online because of the ease of joining groups ofsimilar others, our findings suggest that blogging reflects, or even contributes to, thefragmentation to Korean politics.

Similarly, political blogs of American citizens seem to be grouped along ideo-logical lines, for example, with Andrew Sullivan’s blog on the right or the Daily Kos

on the left. In the 2004 U.S. presidential elections, American politicians appeared tobe active bloggers. They tended to use blogging to inform voters about the campaign,

particularly during the election period (Williams et al., 2005). In contrast, Britishpoliticians are known to have a motivation to blog whilst in office as an effort to

communicate with their constituents about ongoing political events (Trammell,

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2008) 856–879 ª 2008 International Communication Association 873

2006). More strikingly, Cameron, a leader of the UK conservative party, has runa video blog (http://www.webcameron.org.uk/) since October of 2006 (Woodward,

2006). Korean politicians also attempt to quickly adopt new technologies to reachtheir constituents at various levels. As seen in this study, the blog is being recognized

by Korean political players as a cyber-campaign tool that helps to build a network.To be more specific, given that the distinct national political culture (e.g., collectiv-istic political discussions), online chain-referral via blogroll links is often perceived as

fairly powerful and credible and is likely to generate a strong impact on the politicalprocess and electoral results (Park & Kluver, 2008). Thus, there are a number of

ordinary blogs run by those who are elected as well as prospective politicians.When it comes to citizen blogs and their possible ‘‘whispering effect’’ on political

information and communication, the Korean model seems to be both similar to anddifferent from that of the US. Social activists and (ex)journalists are prominent

political bloggers in the US and their professional blogging often motivates thepublic to question political campaigns. Furthermore, American A-list elite bloggersbecame a financial channel with links to donation sites. In contrast, it seems that

Korean political bloggers range from college students to salaried white collar work-ers. The Korean blogosphere seems to be repeatedly filled with poor quality comment

and debate, and with hate speech. Academics seem to seldom run political blogs. Thisperhaps reflects the emotional attachment of Korean people to political events and

the self-censorship of Korean elites.

Conclusion

This research provides some interesting interpretations with respect to South Koreannational politics. First, the percentage of elite blogging citizens affiliated with theruling Uri party is large in comparison to the opposition GNP, confirming previous

research. Furthermore, blogs affiliated with the ruling Uri party are the most activeonline. Many GNP members run blogs but they are weakly coupled with citizen

groups. Thus, the information penetration of the opposition conservative party isnarrow in the popular blogosphere. On the other hand, few Uri Assemblymen are

active bloggers but they have relatively many strong ties with ordinary people in theblogosphere. This suggests that the Uri party sustains its online presence through

supporters’ blogs and its messages are probably efficiently communicated throughblog networks. This perhaps reflects the power that ‘‘an army of Davids’’ (Reynolds,2006) can have on politics.

The blog network topology was relatively sparse because only 4% of possible tiesamong the 79 elite citizen blogs existed in the blogrolls. Nevertheless, the analysis

points to the Uri party attracting the DLP away from the GNP in terms of links.Moreover, several blogs are at the center of the Uri and GNP link clusters and are

connected to both camps. These are potentially the most important blogs, and onlya minority of them belongs to journalists. The rise of this ‘‘central citizen’’ group is

potentially a signal for the development of the political landscape in the near future.

874 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2008) 856–879 ª 2008 International Communication Association

These two factors suggest that the landscape of Korean political discourse may bechanging. At the time of data gathering for this research, the Korea presidential

election was a year away.In the Korean 2007 presidential elections, the candidate of the main opposition

party (GNP) Lee Myung-bak won the presidency by a significant margin. Theimportance of ‘‘economic development’’ rather than ‘‘democratic participation’’had rapidly grown and as a result, the influence of online networking power probably

declined during the 2007 elections. The most noticeable difference from the previouselections, was that the Internet is no longer the exclusive preserve of young liberals

who are more likely to be affiliated with the ruling party (Park & Lee, 2008). Agrowing number of conservatives have utilized political websites since defeat in

the 2002 presidential and 2004 parliamentary elections. Widening access to politicalwebsites across the generational and political spectrums is one of the contributing

factors to the conservatization of Korean cyberspace. Our research clearly suggestedthat the networking capacity of the ruling Uri party, measured in terms of thenumber of citizen bloggers hyperlinked both to and from politician sites, would

gradually wane.As the first analysis of its kind, this study has wider implications for the value of

blogroll links as an analytical tool to help understand the relationship betweenpoliticians and influential citizen bloggers in Korea, the US, or elsewhere. Although

we have not validated our results in the sense of taking steps to assess theirreasonableness, this study has clearly given a way to make sense of what might

otherwise be an undifferentiated mass blogosphere. Future research may revealwhether this is the best approach and whether the information gained has genuine

practical use. Nevertheless, the outlook is promising in the sense of the develop-ment of a practical set of methods that have yielded (so far) simple and reasonableresults.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a Korea Research Foundation Grant (KRF-2004-042-H00004). This paper is a part of the ‘‘Web Sphere Analysis for Political Websites’’Project.

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About the Author

Han Woo PARK is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication &

Information, YeungNam University, South Korea, where he teach courses and con-duct research on the use of new communication technologies in extending social andpolitical networks, and e-science/e-research topics. Over past few years, he has con-

tributed important works in the area of Link Analysis (also called, Webometrics)

878 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2008) 856–879 ª 2008 International Communication Association

from the perspective of Social Network Analysis. Currently, he is a coeditor of theJournal of Contemporary Eastern Asia.

Email: hanpark@ynu.ac.kr / parkhanwoo@hotmail.comWebsite: http:/www.hanpark.net

Address: Dept of Communication & Information, YeungNam University214-1, Dae-dong, Gyeongsan-si,Gyeongsangbuk-do,South Korea, Zip Code 712-749

Mike Thelwall is Professor of Information Science and leader of the Statistical

Cybermetrics Research Group at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. He is alsovisiting fellow of the Amsterdam Virtual Knowledge Studio, a Docent at Abo Aka-demi University Department of Information Studies, and a research associate at the

Oxford Internet Institute. He has developed tools for downloading and analyzingweb sites, blogs and social networking sites, including the research web crawler

SocSciBot and the LexiURL link analysis software. He is the author of the book LinkAnalysis: An Information Science Approach, and sits on nine editorial boards.

Email: m.thelwall@wlv.ac.ukWebsite: http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1993/mycv.html

Address: School of Computing and IT, University of Wolverhampton, WulfrunaStreet

Wolverhampton, WV1 1LY, UK

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2008) 856–879 ª 2008 International Communication Association 879