Description
Igniting the Internet focuses on the cultural dynamics that have allowed the Internet to bring issues rapidly to public attention and exert influence on both domestic and international politics. The author combines a robust analysis of online communities with nuanced interview data to theorize a "cultural ignition process"-the mechanisms and implications for popular politics in volatile Internet-driven activism-in South Korea and beyond. She offers a unique perspective on how local actors experience and remember the cultural dynamics of Internet-born activism and how these experiences shape the political identities of a generation who has essentially come of age in cyberspace, the so-called digital natives or millennials.
South Korea's debates on the nature of youth-driven Internet protest reverberated around the world following the events in Tahrir Square in 2010 and Zuccotti Park in 2011. Igniting the Internet offers numerous points of comparison with countries following a path of technological development and urban youth formation similar to that of South Korea with a thorough consideration of general structural changes and locally specific triggers for Internet activism. Readers interested in social movement theory and new media in social context as well as students and scholars of Korean studies will find the work both far-reaching and insightful.
About the Author
Jiyeon Kang is assistant professor of communication studies and Korean studies at the University of Iowa.
Book Information
ISBN 9780824856571
Author Jiyeon Kang
Format Paperback
Page Count 254
Imprint University of Hawai'i Press
Publisher University of Hawai'i Press