Download Igniting the Internet : Youth and Activism in Postauthoritarian South Korea in TXT
9780824856564 English 0824856562 Igniting the Internet is one of the first books to examine in depth the development and consequences of Internet-born politics in the twenty-first century. It takes up the new wave of South Korean youth activism that originated online in 2002, when the country's dynamic cyberspace transformed a vehicular accident involving two U.S. servicemen into a national furor that compelled many Koreans to reexamine the fifty-year relationship between the two countries. Responding to the accident, which ended in the deaths of two high school students, technologically savvy youth went online to organize demonstrations that grew into nightly rallies across the nation. Internet-born, youth-driven mass protest has since become a familiar and effective repertoire for activism in South Korea, even as the rest of the world has struggled to find its feet with this emerging model of political involvement. The book 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. Kang 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 perceive the cultural dynamics of Internet-born activism and how their experiences shape the political identities of a generation that has essentially come of age in cyberspace, the so-called digital natives or millennials.
9780824856564 English 0824856562 Igniting the Internet is one of the first books to examine in depth the development and consequences of Internet-born politics in the twenty-first century. It takes up the new wave of South Korean youth activism that originated online in 2002, when the country's dynamic cyberspace transformed a vehicular accident involving two U.S. servicemen into a national furor that compelled many Koreans to reexamine the fifty-year relationship between the two countries. Responding to the accident, which ended in the deaths of two high school students, technologically savvy youth went online to organize demonstrations that grew into nightly rallies across the nation. Internet-born, youth-driven mass protest has since become a familiar and effective repertoire for activism in South Korea, even as the rest of the world has struggled to find its feet with this emerging model of political involvement. The book 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. Kang 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 perceive the cultural dynamics of Internet-born activism and how their experiences shape the political identities of a generation that has essentially come of age in cyberspace, the so-called digital natives or millennials.