Futures of Learning

The terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November 2008 showed the pervasiveness of new media technologies in India, as Indians flocked to sites like twitter, flickr, utube and blogs to post eye witness and other accounts of the events. CNN argued that ‘social media appeared to come of age and signaled itself as a news-gathering force to be reckoned with’ (http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/27/mumbai.twitter/), and the incident lends itself to examining to creation of an (alternative) public sphere with the help of new media technologies. In this post, I will focus on India’s social networking sites, the virtual spaces created by and around the Indian diaspora, as well as on the use of the internet for economic development purposes.

Social Networking Sites

According to a report released in February 2009, visits to social networking sites in India increased by 51 percent during 2008, to 19 million visitors in December 2008 (http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2728 ). Orkut is by far the most popular social networking site in the country, followed by Facebook. Still, academic studies of how young people use these sites are just beginning to emerge.

A comparative study of Indian and US university students showed many common communication patterns in their use of social networking sites (Marshall et al 2008). What was more interesting were the differences, however, as Indian students’ behavior seemed to be significantly more individualistic than that of US students. This was surprising to the researchers, since Americans are thought to live in a more individualistic society than Indians. Concretely, almost 70 percent of Indian students made their profile public/visible for anyone to see, versus only 28.6 percent for US students, who were more likely to make their profile visible to friends only.  Indian students were also more likely to either engage a stranger contacting them, or to tell him/her to leave them alone, which was found to be in contrast with an (Indian) collectivist ethos that is supposed to be less trusting and more evasive of strangers.  Indian students are also more likely to have online friends whom they have never met before, which shows that they use social networking sites to make and sustain friendships, something that is not the case in the US.  In sum, Indian students seem less cautious about online privacy than their American counterparts, and are more forward with strangers they meet on the site (Marshall et al 2008).

Of particular importance in the Indian youth context is the use of new media technologies as a bridge between traditional and modern forms of social networking, such as can be found in dating and marriage sites. Adams and Ghose (2003) discuss the creation and use of ‘matrimonial sites’ wherein parents and (now) individuals themselves place want ads describing their particular attributes and desires for a marriage partner. While in North American contexts, sites like http://www.match.com and other dating websites make the transactional nature of relationships more apparent, sites like http://www.shaadi.com and others have extended and (in some cases) made easier the practices associated with arranged marriages in India. By allowing young people to place their own ads, such social networking sites are enabling them to navigate the tension between arranged and love marriages, providing a sense of choice for Indian youth operating within the constraints of Indian values surrounding education, status, caste, religion and complexion (Sharma 2008).

The internet is also offering a way to express otherwise suppressed issues and desires. Some studies have shown the growth of chat rooms in suburban areas, where they are frequented by predominantly 18 – 22 year-old males who assume an online identity in order to meet new people (Rangaswamy 2007a). There is also a convergence of social networking sites with mobile platforms; recently Virgin Mobile India announced a partnership with MySpace for making its social networking services available on Virgin Mobile WAP-enabled phones in India (http://www.campaignindia.in/feature/all_about_mobile_social_networking).

In regards to blogging, in July 2008, the Indian Ministry of Human Resources and Development issued a report recommending to make blogging, community radio, robotic kits and other technology devices part of public school curricula (http://southasia.oneworld.net/ictsfordevelopment/indian-schools-to-use-new-age-technologies ). The report states that “blogs are powerful tools to support creative writing that can be published and shared not only with the teacher but also with peers and the world, alike. Spreadsheets, databases, concept maps, and hypermedia authoring tools (Web development tools) to encourage critical thinking could also be encouraged.” Blogs are indeed a good way to express critical thinking; the aftermath of the Delhi Public School scandal, described in my mobile phone post last week, led to intense online activity of young people in blogs and discussion fora. While the blogs were more racy and packed with innuendoes against school administrators, the discussion fora raised issues of privacy, freedom, morality and responsibility among the users of the cell phones, the tenor being that new media technologies are an invincible force that are here to stay. Their advance into Indian society cannot be stopped by government bans, which also resonates with the quote that ended my game blog last Friday.

Blogs also played an important support role after the Mumbai attacks, as individuals set them up in order to provide vital information, for example about which hospitals needed blood donations, and to help family members search for each other. Twenty-nine-year-old blogger Harish Iyer published his mobile phone number and email address on a blog he set up soon after the attacks began (http://mumbaihelp.blogspot.com/). In the following 20 hours, he received around sixty phone calls and 100 emails from people desperate to find loved ones (http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/27/bloggers.mumbai/index.html). It was flickr however that was the preferred medium of the ‘citizen journalists’ that provided instant and constant news feeds and updates about crisis. An article by CNN estimated that 80 tweets were being sent to Twitter.com via SMS every five seconds http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/27/mumbai.twitter/. However, the deluge of messages also revealed some of the shortcomings of the medium: on the one hand the lack of proper contextual information by most people sending the messages, and on the other the recycling of (sometimes incorrect) information. As blogger Tim Mallon put it, “I started to see an ugly side to Twitter, far from being a crowd-sourced version of the news it was actually an incoherent, rumour-fueled mob operating in a mad echo chamber of tweets, re-tweets and re-re-tweets.” This ability of new media technologies to spread rumors and support nationalistic and other discriminatory feelings has been commented on already in the China posts. While we have not seen the same extent in India, the BJP-Hindu Nationalist movement is starting to use the internet to spread its message (Chopra 2008).

On October 10, 2006, the Bombay High Court served a notice to Google for allowing a hate campaign against India, in reference to a community called ‘We Hate India’ created on Orkut, which initially carried a picture of an Indian flag being burned and some anti-India content (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2136970.cms). Even before the petition was filed, many Orkut users had noticed this community and were mailing or otherwise messaging their contacts on Orkut to report the community as bogus to Google, which eventually deleted the community has now been deleted, but not before it had spawned several ‘We hate those who hate India’ communities. In addition, prior to the 60th Independence Day of India, Orkut’s main page was revamped, with a stylized Orkut logo written in the Devanagiri script and colored in the Indian national colors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut). This shows the extent to which new media technologies in general, and social networking sites in particular, are embedded in the offline world of its users. Much more research needs to be done on this in the Indian context. One group of internet users on which academic research is well under way are Indian expatriates.

NRIs in Cyberspace

NRIs, or Non Resident Indians, is an official socio-legal category for Indians living outside of India. There are estimated to be about 25 millions of them, living mainly in neighboring countries, as well as the US, Malaysia and the UK (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Indiandiaspora.jpg). Given these numbers, it is not surprising that much of the research on Indian internet practices focuses upon the broader Indian diaspora and their use of the internet.

A recent edited volume by Gajjala and Gajjala (2008) examines the range of ways in which cyberspace helps to build bridges between India and the diaspora, which in turn builds on a 2006 special edition of the New Media and Society journal (Gajjala 2006). The various articles are focusing on the IT industry, entertainment, political movements as well as questions of belonging. What emerges from these studies is the importance of who defines and participates in internet practices in the context of an increasingly flexible global economy.

Mitra (2006) focuses on US South Asian immigrants’ use of “cybernetic safe spaces” to give voice to their Indian (immigrant) identity, which they are unable to express in other contexts. These online spaces are used to recreate cultural and religious practices of identity formation, as immigrants feel increasingly threatened by the sociopolitical and economic backlashes against them in a post-9/11 environment. Relatedly, cybershrines, virtual worship sites as well as cultural and heritage portals allow Indians abroad to access spirituality in a virtual way, and the majority of orders for products and services from these sites come from outside India (Barbar 2001). Mallapragada (2006) looks at the relationship between home, homeland and homepage in the 1990s and the creation of an Indian-American web that reflects the politics of belonging for NRIs. An important aspect of this is to access news from back home, via newspapers and other news sources, also of the ‘nationalist jingoist’ kind (Brosius 1999). On the other end of the political spectrum, Dalits and other low castes are using the internet as a means of organizing (Thirumal 2008, Chopra 2006). This suggests that the internet and other new media can provide the possibilities for establishing an alternative public sphere.

In this regard it is important to pay attention the possible reproduction of existing power dynamics, especially as access to the internet can be barred for already marginalized groups (Sreekumar 2006). Until more research on (local?) Indian participation on the internet occurs (cf. Tacchi 2006), we do not know the extent to which these discourses and practices are part and parcel of everyday Indian’s lives or the extent to which non-elites in India possess space and voice in these networked public cultures. This raises once again the question of the use of new media technologies for development purposes, which is always part of the Indian case.

Internet for Development

In the Indian context, the internet’s macroeconomic effects have been remarkable, with the rise of the country’s software and business processing industries, which have led to improved lives for a growing middle class. Acquiring computer skills are seen as crucial in joining this national destiny, and there are large numbers of private schools training youth in marketable and commercial computer skills (Biao 2007). Biao’s ethnography of bodyshops in Andhra Pradesh and Australia situates the IT business in a rich socio-cultural context, exemplary is his analysis of the increasing importance of dowry to pay the fees for IT schools.

Computers are also a compulsory subject in public schools, and as I stated in my first post, lead to increased computer and internet consumption in Indian homes. Here, e-mailing, chatting, browsing as well as computer game downloads are all subject to censorship and monitoring, especially as they are seen as distractions from learning (Rangaswamy 2007b). On the other hand, youth argue that general internet skills will help them in the work world, such as browsing for information about prospective schools, getting information for job interviews, and communicating with alumni.

Besides the campuses of the likes of Infosys and Wipro, it is call centers that have most forcefully captured the national economic imagination. Shome (2006) theorizes how the cultural politics of Indian call centers, and the global flows of information technology through them, manifest new and emerging frameworks of hybridity and diaspora. Such frameworks point to new relations of race, belonging, and colonialism and unsettle many of the prevailing assumptions through which diaspora and hybridity have been typically understood (Mitra 2008). McMillin (2008) and Mirchandani (2008) look at the ways in which working in call centers structures engagements with new media and technology, and how it affects the family and social life of middle class families.

In talking about the emergence of an (alternative) public or political sphere through the internet, it is also important to mention the many e-government initiatives that have been started in several Indian states in order to bring state and local governments closer to citizens (Sreekumar 2007, Schwittay 2008). As is often the case with the use of technology for development, high hopes and easy assumptions about the possibilities of especially marginalized groups to learn about, apply for and receive government assistance and other services online have given way to more realistic assessments. These show the ways in which new media technologies have to be embedded in people’s everyday lives, and in turn have to take political, socio-economic and cultural contexts into acccount in order to be truly meaningful and to realize their full potential.

References Cited:

Adams, P. and R. Ghose (2003) India.com: the construction of a space between. Progress in Human Geography, 27(4), 414–437.

Barbar, A. (2001). Diaspora, Cybershrines and the Woman’s question in media (review article).  Gender, Technology and Development, 5, 289.

Biao, X. (2007). Global ‘Body Shopping:’ An Indian Labor System in the Global Technology Industry. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Brosius, C. and M. Butcher. (1999) (Eds.) Image Journeys: Audio-visual media and cultural change in India. New Delhi: Sage.

Chopra, R. (2008).  The Virtual State of the Nation: Online Hindu Nationalism in Global Capitalist Modernity. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala, Venkataramana (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Chopra, R. (2006) Global primordialities: virtual identity politics in online Hindutva and online Dalit discourse. New Media & Society, 8, 187-206.

Gajjala, R. and V. Gajjala. (Eds.) (2008) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Gajjala, R. (2006). Editorial: Consuming/producing/inhabiting South-Asian digital diasporas. New Media and Society, 8, 179.

Mallapragada, M. (2006). Home, homeland, homepage: belonging and the Indian-American web. New Media & Society, 8, 207-227.

Marshall, K. et al. (2008) Social Networking Websites in India and the United States: A Cross-national Comparison of Online Privacy and Communication. Issues in Information Society, 9(2), 87 – 94.

McMillin, D. (2008). «Around Sourcing»: Peripheral Centers in the Global Office. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala, Venkataramana (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Mirchandani, K. (2008) Practices of Global Capital: Gaps, Cracks, and Ironies in Transnational Call Centers in India. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala, Venkataramana (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Mitra, A. (2008). Working in Cybernetic Space: Diasporic Indian Call Center Workers in the Outsourced World. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala, Venkataramana (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Mitra, A. (2006). Towards finding a cybernetic safe place: illustrations from people of Indian origin. New Media & Society, 8, 251-268.

Rangaswamy, N. (2007a). ICT for Development and Commerce: A Case Study of Internet Cafes in India. Paper presented at the 9th international conference on social implications of computers in developing countries. Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Rangaswamy, N. (2007b). The Aspirational PC: Home Computers and Indian Middle class Domesticity. Unpublished paper prepared for Microsoft Research India.

Schwittay, A. (2008) A Living Lab: Corporate Delivery of ICTs in Rural India. Science, Technology and Society, 13(2), 175-210.

Shome, R. (2006) Thinking through the diaspora: Call centers, India, and a new politics of hybridity. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 9 (1), 105-124.

Sreekumar, T.T. (2007) Decrypting E-Governance: Narratives, Power Play and Participation in the Gyandoot Internet. Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 32 (4), 1-24.

Sreekumar, T.T. (2006). ICTs for the Rural Poor: Civil Society and Cyber-Libertarian Developmentialism in India. In G. Parayil (Ed.), Political Economy and Information Capitalism in India: Digital Divide Development and Equity. (pp 61-87). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Sharma, A. (2008). Caste on Indian Marriage dot-com: Presence and Absence. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala, Venkataramana (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Thirumal, P. (2008) Situating the New Media: Reformulating the Dalit Question. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala, Venkataramana (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Tacchi, J. (2006). Information, Communication, Poverty and Voice. Paper presented at Mapping the New Field of Communication for Development and Social Change, 5-8 July 2006, University of Queensland.

In 1997, the first major portal Daum began its free email service and subsequently opened Internet cafes (public forums) two years later. Since its early days, online space in Korea was rarely considered as purely cyber or virtual space occupied by techno-geek. Instead, the strong connectivity between online and offline reality defines Internet as an inextricable part of techno-culture in Korea. While the excessive commercialism of internet culture often becomes the target of cultural critique, its potential as an alternative public space that can harbor diverse voices free from the regulations of authorities and can nourish new ways of civil democracy attracts the attention of both Korean and foreign scholars. The early buzz about Ohmynews is a typical example of celebrating the new form of ‘citizen journalism’ (Rheingold, 2002). Cho (2007) assesses that these vigorous civil and voluntary experiments characterize early days of Internet in Korea (1998-2002) as “temporary self-regulated space,” until it was eventually governed by commercial networks.

In this context, it is not surprising that ‘online community’ is at the center of the discussion. Since early 2000s, online community, housed in several major portals such as Daum and Naver, has become the main site for online activities. These domestic portal sites yield the enormous power of structuring Korean Internet culture in unique ways. For example, among general Korean Internet users, Naver is the most popular search engine with its famous Jishiin, one of the early crowd sourcing search system if not the first to incorporate the ‘collective wisdom.’ Although Naver’s search engine mostly provides information within its own network, Korean users prefer its easy and quick access to useful information garnered from its huge database of individual blogs, public forums, news and multimedia content. Naver and Daum occupy 88.3 percent of domestic search engine market while Google falls short with 2.1 percent share (NIA, 2008). At the same time, numerous online communities and public forms in these sites, spread across diverse categories such as tastes, ages, and vocations, tend to be more influential than individual power bloggers in shaping public opinion (i.e. Daum Agora Café). When the controversial social issues arise, they easily turn into the sites for public debate that often accompanies new forms of political actions such as online petition, cyber protest, and the relay of banners. In 2008, Daum alone had around 7.3 million cafes running and the average of 3000 – 4000 new cafes opened daily (www.daum.net).

Young people are main residents of this online space. Their activities in various online communities have become the central focus of the discourse on cyber youth culture. In conversation with the overall changes of Korean society in political and cultural sphere since the 1990s, Bae (2003) and Yoon (2001) define the ‘Net’ generation as a new social group growing out of online community. In the same vein, Choi (2005) argues Net generation embodies a new form of identity that blends newly emerged individualistic lifestyle and anonymous networking in online space, which is distinguished from the existing social behaviors of older generations. This socio-psychological approach constructs the image of Korean youth who easily accept the cyber space as an extension of the real world and enjoy exploring diverse new media tools for self-expression (Hwang, 2000; Soh, 2002).

In particular, interest-driven online communities are major playgrounds for Korean youth. They are the center for active knowledge building and informal learning that is motivated by diverse leisure activities. According to Cho (2006), in 2003, 99.1 percent of Korean adolescents who used computers daily, logged in to the Internet and 89.1 percent of them has a membership in more than one online community: Each person had an average of 13.7 communities. The overpowering presence of the youth in online community is increasing each year. In 2003, 77.7 percent of the Daum café user is in their teens and twenties and they also make the majority of the café managers (Kang, 2003). Young people join online community activities primarily “to share with same interest and taste” (62.9%) and continue engaging with them “in order to attain information or knowledge”(39.9%) (Hwang, 2003). Fan communities are full of these shared learning activities, often about other cultures. For example, it is common for young people to teach each other basic level Japanese in a typical portable game fan community (Cho, 2006). The popularity of online community-based activities is often attributed to its function as the emotional outlet for youth in Korea, where alternative play culture and the democratic communication structure across generations tend to be repressed in real life. In that sense, youth targeted online communities such as Sayclub (Kang, 2003) and Damoim (Kim, 2003) meet their desire to hang out and carve out their own space outside of adult supervision and social pressures.

On the other side, blogging is another prevalent online practice. In fact, Korea “boasts the second largest number of bloggers in the world, surpassed only by the Unites States of America” (Choi, 2006). However, it is interesting that blogging in Korea is closely linked with the adoption of social network sites (SNS). While blogs are considered to be the private space compared to the more public-oriented online communities, young people use blog primarily “to build and maintain social relationship” rather than to engage “journalistic or participatory activities” (Kim, 2006; Choi, 2006). Cyworld, one of the first SNS service in the world that was introduced in 1999, represents this culturally specific tendency in Korean blogsphere. Over 90 percent of Korean Internet users in their twenties are members of Cyworld (http://times.hankooki.com). Its phenomenal popularity and social impact generated cultural syndrome across generations, ages, and genders as its membership equates approximately to one quarter of the nation’s entire population. Referring to the obsessive use of Cyworld, new jargons such as Cying (doing Cyworld)’ and Cy-pein (Cy fanatic/geeks) have become popular additions to everyday conversation. In this context, it is not surprising that most Korean/English studies of SNS and blogsphere in Korea focus on Cyworld.

Most of all, it is the unique formal aspects of Cyworld that distinguish it from common blog applications and thus show how technology is culturally shaped and appropriated into a specific emotional technology. Cyworld provides a personal space called Mini-hompy, which MySpace adopted in a similar way, and Il-chon (literally, the first degree kinship) system, a tool to network with other Cyworld users (an equivalent to ‘neighbors’ in MySpace). In essence, by providing cute layouts, avatars, images, virtual goods, and hip multimedia content, Cyworld represents the cute aesthetics - the unique operating principle of popular culture in Korea as well as in Japan. This culturally friendly system (cute aesthetics, Il-chon) and easy application tools allow the user to express his/her identity through the customization of Mini-hompy and encourage migratory practice across interconnected digital media sphere (Hjorth & Kim, 2005).

Cultural factors are often accredited for the success of Cyworld since long-term human network maintenance is regarded as highly important in the collectivistic and interdependent Korean society. The adoption of blogging as a tool to reaffirm offline social relation is a pervasive phenomenon that is not limited to Cyworld: Relation-oriented blogs are generally more popular in Korea (Na et al, 2007). Korean youth also primarily engage with Cyworld to micromanage their social relationship (Kim & Yun, 2008). In fact, according to Jang & Nam (2006), the most frequented type of sites for Korean youth is Mini-hompy/blog. Café board ranks the second and Internet game site follows. Na et al (2007)’s comparative ethnographic study of blog-type young Internet users and game-type users reveal that blog-type interest users tend to valorize relation-oriented activity. However, young people adopt the careful ‘social’ filtering system by utilizing screening tools embedded in Cyworld (Choi, 2006). In this sense, Mini-hompy functions as a closed or controlled open space. Recently, the closed usage of Cyworld for securing personal space is increasing significantly as 30 percent of Cyworld users identify themselves as solely diary recorders (Hwang et al, 2008).

Overall, as in many other national contexts, youth Internet culture in Korea has met with ambivalent responses in public and academic discourse. Blogging is generally received as a positive activity since it motivates young Koreans to blog to build ‘self-respect’ and ‘self-identity’ (Kim, 2006). On the contrary, young people’s fun-oriented consumption/reappropriation of multimedia content in online space is more vulnerable to securitizing eyes. In fact, Internet has already replaced old media as the preferred mode of media consumption: Creating and sharing multimedia content has become common practice among Korean youth. Before Youtube grabbed the heart of global viewers, Korean online space was already flooded with busy file transmissions as soon as domestic media production softwares and commercial P2P sites and UCC sites (notably, Pandora TV and GomTV) opened their channels. In a broader context, this play culture that messes around with media content forms part of young people’s widespread practice of new media production, which I will dwell on in a following blog post.

Lastly, what is particularly interesting about Korean youth Internet culture is the increasing mobilization of young people for civic engagement through the use of diverse new media technologies. Recent ‘Candlelight Protests’ organized against American beef import in 2008 was a watershed moment because teenagers emerged as the new political agents (especially, teenage girls). Active and organized teenagers’ participation set off and sustained the event. On the first day of candlelight protest in May 2nd 2008, teenagers comprised 60-70 percent of attendees and the image of ‘Candlelight Girls’ immediately became the icon of this civil movement (Lee & Jung, 2008). Although the main cause for the protest was the resumed import of American beef with insufficient measures to screen mad cow disease that might affect their well-beings in the future, many argues that it was Korean teenagers’ ongoing dissatisfaction with the repressive educational system and fear for intensifying competition driven by new government’s educational policies (such as ‘Immersive English Teaching Program’) that triggered teenagers’ voluntary collective action.

However, ‘e-politics’ of Korean youth is not a sudden phenomenon. Candlelight girls have their predecessors. Social issues that mobilized Korean youth to participate in real action are diverse in their scope and scale, from more direct political events such as the 2002 presidential election (Kim, 2004) and the anti-American protest around the middle school girls accidental death by GI (Bhuiyan, 2004) to micro-level problems of educational systems. In particular, Lee et al (2007) traces preceding incidents that “digital natives” have collectively voiced out through online communities: ‘No Cut’ campaign (against rigid hairstyle controls in the secondary schools) in 2000, the protest against reformed university entrance selection system (2004), and the campaign of the ‘National Network for the Protection of Student Human Rights’ in 2005. Significantly, No-cut campaign is recorded as one of the first successful e-political movements of Korean youth that led to the revision of official policy.

Youth also brought new mode of political communication. Korean youth demonstrated savvy use of diverse communication channels in delivering their voices, which is clearly distinguished from the monolithic and centralized mode of dominant media. While online space provides the main channel to obtain and share information as well as to form the public opinion, mobile phone plays a key role in mobilizing and coordinating actions on the spot as well as recording/live broadcasting the progress of the event. These multiple forms of news get spread across diverse media channels including their own Mini-hompy/blog, SMS, and portal sites. At the same time, Lee (2007) highlights young people’s changed attitude toward political engagement, which has become more ‘fun’ oriented. In other words, young people tend to combine participation in social and political affairs with play, parody, humor, wit and caricature to express their feelings and opinions rather than direct criticism. Memorable scenes from the candlelight protest are inundated with creative picket signs of diverse causes and witty performances in a free speech podium. (i.e. skit, dancing, and singing). These displays of playful demonstration resonate with the comparatively unrestrained participatory culture of young people in Internet space. However, the significance and implication of these recent incidents and the e-politics of Korean youth are still under discussion and require more thorough analysis. As Park (2002) criticizes, while Internet provides the alternative public forum for young people to voice out easily, it does not automatically guarantee the actual attendance of young voters.

References

English Sources

Bae, I. (2003). Cyber Influences on the Youth and Related Policies in South Korea: Focused on Internet. Journal of Youth Studies-Hong Kong, 6(1), 144-157.

Bhuiyan, S. I. (2004). Use of Internet in Political Participation in South Korea. Asia Pacific Media Educator, (15), 115-130.

Choi, J. (2006). Living in Cyworld: Contextualizing Cy-ties in South Korea.  In Uses of Blogs (pp. 173-186). New York: Peter Lang.

Hjorth, L., & Kim, H. (2005). Being There and Being Here: Gendered Customizing of 3G Mobile Practices – Through a Case Study in Seoul. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 11, 49-55.

Kim, H. H. (2004). Broadband Penetration and Participatory Politics: South Korea Case. In Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Hawaii, USA. Retrieved July 30, 2008, from http://csdl2.computer.org/persagen/DLAbsToc.jsp?resourcePath=/dl/proceedings/&toc=comp/proceedings/hicss/2004/2056/05/2056toc.xml&DOI=10.1109/HICSS.2004.1265301.

Kim, K., & Yun, H. (2007). Cying for Me, Cying for Us: Relational Dialectics in a Korean Social Network Site. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1). Retrieved July 31, 2008, from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/kim.yun.html.

Kim, K. (2006). Internet addiction in Korean Adolescents and Its relation to Depression and Suicidal Ideation: A questionnaire Survey. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 43(2), 185-192.

Lee, H., Han, G., Oh, S., & Phillips, R. (2007). Participation, Young people and the Internet: Digital Natives in Korea. In Generational Change and New Policy Changes: Australia and South Korea, Sydney, Australia: Sydney University Press. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2123/2084.

Park, L. (2002). Artisanship, Political Interest and Voting Behavior Influenced by Information Technology: Cyber-Life versus Real-Life of Young Generation. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. Boston, USA.

Rheingold, H. (2002). Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Yoon, S. (2001). Internet Discourse and the Habitus of Korea’s New Generation. In Culture, Technology, Communication. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Korean literature

Cho, H. (2006). Jisikjeongbosahweowa Cheongsonyeunmunhwa Jegochal: Cheongsonyeuneui Online Community Chamyeowa Jisik, Jeongbo Seupdeukleul Jungsimeuro (Rethinking Youth Culture in Information Society: Youth Participation in On-line Community and Acquisition of Knowledge and Information). Educational Anthropology Study, 9(2), 141-166.

Cho, H. J. (2007). Internetsideui Munhwayeongu: Juche, Hyeonjang, georigo Seroun “Sahyoi”e dehayeo (Cultural Studies in Internet Age: Subject, Sites, and New “Society”). In H. J. Cho et al, (Eds.), Internet and Asian Cultural Studies. Seoul, Korea: Yonsei University Press.

Choi, W. (2005). Cheongsonyeungwa Cybermunhwa (Youth and Cyberculture). In Cheongsonyeun Munhwaron (Youth Culture Studies). Seoul, Korea: National Youth Policy Institute.

Hwang, J. (2003). Cheonsonyeunui Cybercommunity Chamyei mit Yiyongsilte Yeongu (A Study of Adolescents’ Participation in Cyber community). Seoul, Korea: National Youth Policy Institute.

Hwang, S. (2000). Sinsedae(N sede)ui Jagipyohyeungwa Cyber gongganeseoui Sanghojakyong: Sagowa Hengdong Yangsikui Byeunhwareul Jungsimeoro (Adolescents` Self - Expression and Their Interaction Patterns in Cyberspace ; Exploration of Behavior patterns and Thoughts). Korean Journal of Psychology, 13(3), 9-19.

Hwang, S., Kim, J., & Cho, H. (2008). Cybergonggansokeui Gwangye Mecgi: Cyworld Yiyonghendonge Natanan Social Network Hwaldong Yangsande Dehan Tamsek (Self and Community Experience in Cyberspace: Social Networking in Cyworld). Korean Journal of Consumer and Advertising Psychology, 9(2), 285-303.

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Kang, M. (2003). Sayclubeui Cheongsonyeun Community ( Youth Community in Sayclub). In A Study of Youth Participation and Use of Cyber Community (pp. 175-183). Seoul, Korea: Korea Institute for Youth Development.

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As mentioned in my introductory blog post on new media practices in China, the diffusion of the Internet in China has been extremely rapid, with the nation now having the largest number of Internet users on the planet, many of them with broadband access. According to CNNIC, as of June 2008 the top ten Internet activities in China were: listening to or downloading music, reading news, instant messaging, watching videos, using a search engine, emailing, gaming, using a blog or personal space, participating in a BBS or forum, and shopping (http://www.cinnic.com). Though Chinese use the Internet to read news, according to Guo (2007), much of this news is “infotainment” (e.g., about celebrities) and thus, as mentioned earlier, Chinese cyberspace is mainly perceived as an entertainment medium. Because of the rapid growth of the Internet in China and the particular socio-cultural-political context in which it has emerged, much has been written on the topic in both Chinese and English. A focus that seems to be more prevalent in the Chinese literature is gender differences in Internet usage (Bu, 2002; Yang, Wang, Chen & Wang, 2004; Zhou, 2005). In what follows I will not attempt an exhaustive overview of the Chinese Internet but instead will highlight practices that are especially interesting within the Chinese context. These include the use of blogs, BBS (online forums), and, increasingly, social networking sites. All of these virtual spaces provide an arena where ordinary citizens are able not only to enjoy themselves, but also to express opinions (particularly those that might not be sanctioned in real life), vent frustrations, engage in fantasy, and mobilize for collective action (within limits).

The first blog went online in China in 2002, and since then the number of bloggers has increased dramatically every year.  In 2006, there were 33 million blog spaces in China and in 2007 this number had risen to 40 million. By June 2008 the figure had increased to 107 million, with more than 42 percent of those online in China stating that they had their own blog (http://www.cinnic.com). According to CNNIC’s latest report, by the end of 2008 China had 162 million bloggers (http://www.cnnic.cn/uploadfiles/pdf/2009/1/13/92458.pdf). Popular blog hosting sites in China include Sina.com, Sohu.com, Bokee, Blogbus, and MSN Spaces. Of course, not all of China’s millions of blogs are active, nor are they political. Like their western counterparts, most are personal narratives written by young people, usually college students, about their daily lives (MacKinnon, 2008a). Still, one analysis of global blog-posting over a 24-hour period found the activity of Chinese netizens on MSN Spaces to be three times that of any other country (Hurst, cited in MacKinnon, 2008b). 

Though the Chinese blogosphere has become an important source of information outside official (state) media channels for many of China’s netizens, the most popular blogs in China are those written by celebrities, including movie stars, authors, athletes, and successful entrepreneurs (Nie & Li, 2006). During one point in 2006, the blog of Chinese actress Xu Jinglei even displaced Boing Boing as the number one visited blog in the world, according to Technorati. As elsewhere, celebrities in China capture the public’s attention because of their larger than life personas and the fantasies projected by their lifestyles. What first catapulted blogging into popular consciousness in China, however, was the sex diary of Mu Zimei (real name Li Li), a young woman in Guangzhou (in southern China) who stirred up controversy in 2003 when she began blogging about her active sex life (often quite explicitly), her multiple sex partners (some of whom she publicly named), and her rejection of conventional notions of romantic love. For example, she told one western reporter, “I do not oppose love, but I oppose loyalty. If love has to be based on loyalty, I will not choose love” (Yardley, 2003). As James Farrer (2007) notes, the “Mu Zimei phenomenon” brought the issue of sexual politics into the Internet age in China. After a notorious post about a one-night stand with a Chinese rock star, Mu Zimei’s blog became the number one blog in China for a time, gained substantial attention from numerous media outlets, and invoked admiration as well as scorn from journalists and netizens alike who wrote articles and posted comments in online forums. Although her blog was eventually shut down, she was fired from her job, and her book was banned, she continues to make headlines through, for example, uploading podcasts of her sexual encounters. She has also gained the admiration of many young Chinese women and has inspired numerous imitators, the most famous being Furong Jiejie (Sister Hibiscus) and Liumang Yan (Hooligan Yan). Archived versions of her blog are available online (http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.wenxue.com/T3/?q=blog/353), and she even has her own entry in Wikipedia’s English version (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzi_Mei).

Of course, China does have its share of bloggers who focus on social or political issues rather than pleasure and entertainment. The degree of freedom they have to address sensitive political topics (anything from corruption to individual rights) seems to ebb and flow with the political winds of Beijing. While many noticed a somewhat relaxed atmosphere in the period leading up to and during the Olympics, the current crackdown on websites deemed vulgar or pornographic seems motivated as much by a desire to limit social and political commentary as it does to clean up “harmful” sexual content. This seems particularly true in the wake of Charter 08 – a document posted on the Internet in December of last year calling for greater democratic and legal reforms, and thus far carrying over 8,000 signatures (for a link to a translation and articles about Charter 08 see http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2008/12/china-detains-prominent-dissident-ahead-of-human-rights-day/). This situation has led to a long-term debate about the potential of the Chinese Internet (the blogosphere as well as online forums, discussed below) to serve as a public sphere in China (Damm & Thomas, 2006; Esarey & Xiao, 2008Giese, 2006).

Although blogs are a relatively new addition to China’s Internet environment, online forums and “bulletin board systems” (or BBS) have been popular in China since the late 90s, and they continue to be a virtual space where people feel comparatively free to post news and opinions. This is largely due to the fact that their “free-for-all structure” allows for more anonymity even though many are more closely regulated now than they were in the past (MacKinnon, 2008b). Another reason is that there seem to be as many online forums as there are available topics. Online forums have given rise to various forms of mobilization related to everything from environmental protests to exposing government lies about tainted products. They have also been the arena for what many regard as distasteful forms of “Chinese cyber nationalism” (Xu, 2007). For example, China’s “angry youth” (fenqing) have used BBS and online forums to voice outrage, some of it quite violent, at what are perceived as affronts to China’s national sovereignty or dignity, as evidenced in the anti-Japan protests of 2005 (Liu, 2006) and most recently during the controversies surrounding the March 2008 uprising in Tibet and the 2008 Olympic Torch relay.

These sites have also become the location for a peculiar form of cyber vigilantism known as the “human flesh search engine” (ren rou sou suo), basically an Internet mob that tracks down real individuals for alleged crimes, posts their private information online, and heaps verbal abuse upon them (Liu, 2008). The most notorious case involved a woman, who, after posting the details of her husband’s extra-marital affair online, jumped from a window to her death. After her “death-blog” spread online, netizens took it upon themselves to find the “cheating husband,” (named Wang Fei) provide his personal information for all to see, and then harass him in real life. Other targets have been a woman who smashed a kitten’s head with her high-heeled pumps and a Chinese student at Duke University who had tried to mediate between pro-Tibet and pro-Chinese protestors during the Olympic Torch relay. Many attribute this form of mob behavior to Mao-era customs of “people’s war” and “struggle” or to a “herd mentality” (http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=964203448cbf700c9640912bf9012e05). A recent survey conducted by the China Youth Daily online found that 80 percent of those polled agreed that human flesh search engines should be regulated in some manner (http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/ 2008-06/30/content_8462156.htm). Most recently, Wang Fei (the harassed husband) won a law suit against the web site that posted his deceased wife’s blog (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-12/18/content_10525436.htm).

The practice of the human flesh search engine originated through an entertainment website called mop.com in 2001 with a game where participants were supposed to gather trivia about films, songs, and books and post clues on the website’s “human flesh search engine” area in order to win “mop money.” Mop.com is now a sort of Chinese MySpace and it represents the growing popularity of social networking sites in China. Because most of these sites are relatively new, like many of the practices discussed in this section, there is very little academic research on Chinese SNS. However, although online forums and blogging continue to be extremely popular (for example, the Fourth Chinese Bloggers Conference was held in Guangzhou from November 15-16, 2008), social networking has begun taking off in China. This has caused some such as blogger Maitian to suggest that blogging has run its course in China, particularly since QQ (an online chat platform) and social networking sites are more interactive (http://maitian.blog.techweb.com.cn/archives/233). China now has its own version of Facebook, called Xiaonei (see the image above), with 30 million users, and 51.com, another social networking site, has 100 million (Yu, Zhang, & Li, 2008). As these gain popularity and as more SNS emerge, they are becoming fertile ground for research on digital youth in China.

A final Internet practice worth mentioning involves the techniques that more politically-minded, savvy netizens use to get around Internet censorship. Not surprisingly, a whole body of western-based scholarship and media accounts are concerned with examining the government’s protracted efforts at controlling the Internet and censoring information through methods that are both technological (the “Great Firewall”) and human (“little sister is watching you”) (French, 2003; Zhang, 2006; Zittrain & Edelman, 2003). Despite the actual reality of censorship in China, the majority of Internet users do not seem to be as concerned about this. However, users who do want to express views the government might frown upon (or worse) have invented extremely creative methods to get their messages out, as the graphic below demonstrates.

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