 코드번호 : |
1 |
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| 발표자 : |
장덕진 |
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| 소속 : |
서울대 |
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| 부서 : |
사회학과 |
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| 직위 : |
교수 |
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| 세션시간 : |
09:30-10:10 |
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| 발표자약력 : |
2012.3 – 현재: 서울대학교 사회학과 교수
2011.3 – 현재: 서울대학교 사회발전연구소장
2007.4 – 2012.3: 서울대학교 사회학과 부교수
2006.9 – 2007.8: 하버드 대학교 사회학과 방문교수
2002.9 – 2007.3: 서울대학교 사회학과 조교수
1999.9 – 2002.8: 이화여자대학교 전임강사 |
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| 강연요약 : |
Political scientists have worried about Democracy after Democratization in South Korea because of very low voter turnout. Since procedural democratization began in 1987, voters regarded democracy was “achieved” and, thus, it did not have to be constantly pursued, resulting in rapidly decreasing voter turnout. However, the decrease has not occurred evenly across different social groups and generations. Upper class and older-generation voter turnout has been much higher than its lower class and younger-generation counterpart. With the country’s collective memory of the Korean War in 1950-1953 and the successful but authoritarian economic development in the 1970s and 1980s, older-generation and upper class voters are much more conservative. This uneven political apathy has created the well-known problem of “conservative monopoly” in Korean politics.
However, this paper argues that it is time to think about Democracy after Twitter.
Korea has so far experienced five social elections. By social election I mean an election where more than usual number of voters whose political identities, though not real names, are known and who are connected with each other turn out. The first such experience was the local election on 2 June 2010, followed by a by-election on 27 April 2011, referendum on 27 August 2011, another by-election on 26 October 2011, and the parliamentary election on 11 April 2012. These social elections share a few commonalities. One is that the decrease of voter turnout that has persisted for the past 25 years finally began to rise. Compared with the latest election of a same kind, voter turnout goes up by 5-10 percent. Second, it often changes the election result. It is frequently observed that opposition candidates, who are usually more progressive than the incumbent, wins the election despite the fact that she was down by a considerable gap such as 20-25% in pre-election polls.
To explain this phenomenon, this paper combines two sets of data and analyses: a social network analysis of 4 million Korean Twitter users for the period 1 August 2011 through 30 September 2011; and online survey of 2,000 Twitter users and 1,000 non-users. The two data sets are matched by Twitter IDs provided by the respondents.
Combined with the off-line reality of long-standing conservative monopoly in the Korean politics, this paper argues that SNSs including Twitter are now becoming “the weapon of the unrepresented.” The conservative monopoly has created the problem of political misrepresentation or unrepresented-ness of certain social groups. Those unrepresented have given up voting for a long time because they thought their votes could never change the world. But, connected on Twitter, they are now realizing that there are many others who think the same way and together they can change Korean politics. |
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