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Browsing by Author "Shin, Wooyeol"

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    Being a “Truth-Teller” in the Unsettled Period of Korean Journalism: A Case Study of Newstapa and its Boundary Work
    (2016-06) Shin, Wooyeol
    In this dissertation, I explore the negotiation between the journalistic community and members of the public of what constitutes “good journalism” in today’s Korean society, with the news nonprofit Newstapa as an example of the transformation of the norms and practices of journalism through interactions with citizens. Utilizing ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, I examine how Newstapa journalists do boundary work, attempting to rebuild and maintain their professional identities as “truth-tellers” in and through the use of journalistic practices. These days, a significant number of Koreans have started to question what journalism should be, seeking to assess the performance of journalists. A gap between the range of journalists’ actual behaviors and the range of behaviors that members of the public define as appropriate for journalists has become wider. By pejoratively calling journalists “giraegis,” literally meaning journalists who produce garbage rather than report news, Koreans have actively created and circulated journalism’s meanings. In this unsettled period of Korean journalism, Newstapa journalists strive to rebuild public trust and thereby to be distinguished from “giraegi-like” journalists. By reclaiming the elements of professional journalism and especially emphasizing the public service mission, these journalists try to form arguments determining what journalists’ real self should be in Korean society. My participant observations and interviews with Newstapa journalists help understand how Newstapa journalists reconstruct their professional identities as truth-tellers in ways that justify themselves to other journalists, to the public, and to themselves. In the newsroom, Newstapa journalists develop a set of journalistic dispositions, such as autonomy and endurance, associated with becoming a “good journalist.” These journalistic dispositions are used as symbolic resources through which Newstapa journalists can guide their own boundary work. In the daily and ongoing interaction with citizens, Newstapa journalists have chances to reexamine the roles that citizens can play in the newswork. Newstapa journalists start to embrace the core practices of participatory culture, such as participation, engagement, and collaboration, and then develop a modified version of truth-telling. Newstapa’s truth is different in a sense that it is collaboratively produced in the interaction with citizens. This conversational version of truth-telling leads to the development of mutually beneficial relationships between Newstapa journalists and citizens. In this indissoluble relationship with citizens, Newstapa journalists can confidently self-identify as truth-tellers in the unsettled period of Korean journalism.
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    The making of the 2008 Korean Candlelight Vigil: a study of politics, media, and social movements
    (2013-02) Shin, Wooyeol
    The purpose of this thesis is to explore the process of constructing the collective identity of the protesters of the 2008 Korean Candlelight Vigil and the role of media in the identity construction process. This thesis locates the 2008 Korean Candlelight Vigil as the process of the symbolic power struggle among various actors in order to construct the meaning of the protesters and their movement in the public sphere in Korea. I examines (1) how the process of developing the relationships among social actors - such as the state, the civil society, and the media organizations - has influenced the flow of information in the public sphere in Korea, (2) how this process was connected to the emergence of the 2008 Korean Candlelight Vigil, (3) how the protesters used the media as a tool of collective action, (4) how the protesters self-identified in their media messages, and (5) how the news media engaged in the production of meanings for the 2008 Korean Candlelight Vigil. To understand these questions, a discourse analysis of the newspaper ads funded and designed by the protesters during the 2008 Korean Candlelight Vigil was conducted. In-depth interviews with five protesters were also used to describe the process of this newspaper ad campaigns. In addition, this thesis investigated frames in the news stories about the 2008 Korean Candlelight Vigil in the two national newspapers, The Hankyoreh and the Dong-A Ilbo, which have been viewed as representing the two ideological camps, the liberal-progressives and the conservatives, respectively. The findings of this study show that the 2008 Korean Candlelight Vigil was an effort to change power relationships through constructing and transforming the social meanings, which have been deeply embedded in the history, culture, and collective memory of Korea. The sociopolitical positions of the newspapers provided interpretive frames through which they defined details of the movement. Both The Hankyoreh and the Dong-A Ilbo connected the collective identity of the protesters with values and norms that their readers have shared and been concerned about: in the liberal-progressive Hankyoreh, the movement was defined as the ideal of liberal progressivism, and in the conservative Dong-A Ilbo, it was portrayed as a threat to conservatism. In addition, during the whole process of the movement, a mutually beneficial relationship existed between the protesters and the liberal-progressive newspapers. This symbiotic relationship could have provided the movement's source of values and actions and ultimately led to the construction of a unified actor that we can call the 2008 Korean Candlelight Vigil.