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Measuring Twitter-based political participation and deliberation in the South Korean context by using social network and Triple Helix indicators

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Abstract

This study investigates the role of Twitter in political deliberation and participation by analyzing the ways in which South Korean politicians use Twitter. In addition, the study examines the rise of Twitter as user-generated communication system for political participation and deliberation by using the Triple Helix indicators. For this, we considered five prominent politicians, each belonging to one of four political parties, by using data collected in June 2010. The results suggest that non-mainstream, resource-deficient politicians are more likely to take advantage of Twitter’s potential as an alternative means of political participation and that a small number of Twitter users lead political discourse in the Twittersphere. We also examined the occurrence and co-occurrence of politicians’ names in Twitter posts, and then calculate entropy values for trilateral relationships. The results suggest that the level of political deliberation, expressed in terms of the level of balance in the communication system, is higher when politicians with different political orientations form the trilateral relationships.

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Notes

  1. SMS: short message service.

  2. Indeed, Twitter has been proven to be effective in spreading breaking news. For example, it spread the news about the 2008 Chinese earthquake quicker than any official news channels (Bradshaw 2008). In addition, traditional news organizations, including the New York Times, CNN, and NPR, have been using Twitter to post breaking news alerts and provide updates on sports, business, and traffic (Tenore 2007).

  3. This German study is written and published in German, and thus, we rely on Tumasjan et al. (2010, p. 3) for the study’s findings and quotes. The full citation for this German study is as follows: Meckel, M., and Stanoevska-Slabeva K. 2009. Auch

    Zwitschern muss man üben–Wie Politiker im deutschen

    Bundestagswahlkampf twitterten. Retrieved December

    15 from: http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/kultur/medien/

    auch zwitschern muss man ueben 1.3994226.html.

  4. Cyworld is the most popular social networking site in South Korea.

  5. Their political parties held only 6 seats (5 for the DLP and 1 for the NPP) out of 299 seats in the Korean National Assembly.

  6. According to the National Election Committee’s (2009) report on the income and expenditure of each active political party in Korea, the DLP generated KRW 22.395 billion, and the NPP, KRW 3.375 billion KRW. The ruling party, the GNP, generated KRW 109.322 billion, which was 4.9 times that generated by the DLP and 32.4 times that by the NPP. The DP generated KRW 83.131 billion, which was 3.7 times that generated by the DLP and 24.6 times that by the NPP. In terms of the election campaign expenditure in 2008 (the year in which the 18th National Assembly election was held), the DP spent the most amount of money: KRW 20.812 billion. The GNP spent KRW 8.310 billion, followed by the DLP (KRW 6.715 billion) and the NPP (KRW 577 million).

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Acknowledgments

This research was partly supported by the World Class University (WCU) project through the National Research Foundation of Korea, funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (No. 515-82-06574). The corresponding author is grateful for Ji-Young Park for data collection and visualization.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Journalism and Technical Communication, Colorado State University, 1785 Campus Delivery, Fort Collins, CO, 80523, USA

    Minjeong Kim

  2. Department of Media & Communication, Yeungnam University, 214-1, Dae-dong, Gyeongsangbuk-do, Gyeongsan-si, 712-749, South Korea

    Han Woo Park

  3. World Class University (WCU) Webometrics Institute and CyberEmotions Research Center, Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan-si, South Korea

    Han Woo Park

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  1. Minjeong Kim
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Correspondence to Han Woo Park.

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Kim, M., Park, H.W. Measuring Twitter-based political participation and deliberation in the South Korean context by using social network and Triple Helix indicators. Scientometrics 90, 121–140 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0508-5

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