WEBOMETRICSINSTITUTE

Online Social Networks, Communication, and Trust: Looking for ‘smartness’ of Smartizens

Prof. Han Woo Parkhttp://www.hanpark.net

•An int’l conference on Digital Culture hosted by NIA (National Informatization Agency) of South Korea, 8 Nov 2010 •Theme: Smartizens - The Future of Smart Citizen in Smart Society

Smartizens: Smart mobs They [smart mobs] enable people to act to

together in new ways and in situations where collective action was not possible before (Rheigngold, 2003, p. xviii)

스마트몹은 라인골드의 2003 년 저서 Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution 에서 나온 신조어로서 , 인터넷 및 모바일 매체를 비롯한 최근 디지털 기술의 공통점은 “여러 이슈와 상황에 대해서 사람들이 과거에는 가능하지 않았던 새로운 방식으로 함께 행동하도록 촉진한다” (xviii) 는 점을 강조하는 개념임

Smartizens are not always ‘smart’! As indicated they name, smart mobs are not

always beneficial. Lynch mobs and mobocra-cies continues to engender atrocities. (Rheigngold, 2003, p. xviii)

스마트몹은 사회에 이로운 형태와 내용으로 항상 존재하는 것이 아니라 디지털 매체의 활용 방식에 따라 여러 역작용을 낳을 수 있음- 멘탈 인프라 (Mental Infra)- 정보문화윤리교육

Collective action on Cyworld Minihompy Cyworld Minihompy: Launched in 2001, Cy-

world remains the most popular service in Korea in spite of a recent decrease in usage

Korea’s Cyworld was arguably the world’s first general purpose mass social networking site

This study analyses user-generated comments posted to Korean politicians on SNS Cyworld

Sentiment analysis of textual comments Target link analysis of URLs contained in the

comments

Sample 130 Korean National Assembly Members’ Cy-

world Minihompies. The data were collected April 2008 – June

2009 153,602 comments were collected 1,276 comments contained links

①②③

The status of minihompy①How active ②How famous ③How friendly

Gender

Name

Minihompy

Visitor count

xxx

사진

xxx

xxx

Minihompy

Logged in User

xxx

사진

xxx

IP address

Cyworld-IP screen captureMinihompy

사진

xxx

xxx

xxx

xxx

xxx

Cyworld-IP screen captureMinihompy

사진

사진xxx

xxx

xxx

xxx

Sentiment of Korean smartiznes on Cyworld

n = 650n = 756

female users posted relatively high levels of positive com-ments (75.5%) than male users (67.3%), while male users made more negative comments (32.7%) than female users (24.5%).

To identify the relationship among gender, comment type, and user activity, posters were divided into four groups:

females contributing positive comments (FP), males contributing positive comments (MP), females contributing negative comments (FN), and males contributing negative comments (MN).

The FP group was the most active group, the FN group’s activity was similar to that of male groups, and the MP group was more active than the MN group.

Where do Korean smartizens want take us?-Korea

Category Domain Comments linking to Domain %

Petition agora.media.daum.net 325 17.6

News news.naver.com 150 8.1

SNS cyworld.com 139 7.5

Forum cafe.naver.com 106 5.7

Blog blog.naver.com 72 3.9

Blog blog.daum.net 69 3.7

Blog rokp.tistory.com 61 3.3

NGO bss.or.kr 56 3

Forum cafe.daum.net 51 2.8

Government socialenterprise.go.kr 49 2.7

Total 1078 58.3

Based on 1,078 (58.3%) of 1,849 links to Korean services

Category Domain IP Country Comments linking to Do-

main%

Video-shar-ing

youtube.com United States 15 21.1

Video-shar-ing

video.google.-com

United States 12 16.9

Government ams.usda.gov United States 5 7

Social wel-fare

thesixsys-tem.net

United States 5 7

News reuters.com United States 5 7

Homepage jameswon.awardspace.us

Germany 3 4.2

Advertising danawa.tk Netherlands 2 2.8

News news.bbc.co.uk United King-dom

2 2.8

News ireport.com United States 1 1.4

News iht.com United States 1 1.4

Total 51 71.8Based on 51 (71.8%) of 71 links to overseas services

Where do Korean smartizens want take us?-Oversea

Strict Regulation and Cyber-Exile “Prohibition of Unlawful Distribution or Dis-

play of Documents and Pictures” Article 93 of the Public Official Election

Act No one may distribute or display any ma-

terials containing endorsement of or op-position to a candidate/party in 6 months prior to the election

The NEC applies this to blog posts, viewer comments at news sites and tweets among others.

Internet real-name system

What makes Korean smartizens hyperlink to?

Category Informa-tion provi-sion

Net-work build-ing

Identity/im-age building

Audi-ence sharing

Message amplifica-tion

Spam

Opposition Female

1 20 0 0 11 9

Opposition Male

3 4 1 1 13 8

Opposition Unknown

0 11 1 0 14 2

Ruling Female

1 6 0 0 29 3

Ruling Male

1 5 0 0 23 7

Ruling Unknown

0 12 0 1 16 3

Total 6 58 2 2 106 32

% 3% 28% 1% 1% 51% 16%

Table 6: Comments categorized by link type from the six groups of gender and political affiliation

Based on 206 comments agreed on by both coders from the initial set of 300

Sentiment of Korean smartizens to link

candlelight protest

suicide of ex-president Roh

Findings & Discussion Males are marginally more likely to comment

on Cyworld Minihompies using links than females

Minihompies managed by ruling politicians were found to be of greater prominence than those of the opposition parties

Message Amplification and Network Building were found to be the dominant purpose for submitting links within user-generated com-ments.

Unpredicted Twitter growth in Korea Korea is also known as the Tomb of global IT

services (Naver > Google, HWP > MS Word, Nate > global IMs)

As of April 2010, Twitter is one of the most popular micro-blogging SNS services in Korea. Twitter has about 2.1 million unique visitors, and Twitter pages are viewed about 49.5 million times per day (National Informatization Agency, 2010, p. 235).

Cyworld VS Me2Day VS Twitter

Twitter.com VS Twtkr.com Twtkr is a 3rd party service using Twitter API Twtkr.com is customized for sending and re-

trieving Korean twitter messages, and Tweets containing more than the standard 140 char-acter limit are possible

Korean twitter messages are not well indexed in Twitter.com and Twtkr.com provides a search option for Korean Tweets

Twtkr.com VS Twitter.com interface

Original Twitter Interface

xxx

Sejong City Project The Sejong City project refers to relocating two-third of

administration departments, including the prime min-ister and other ministers, to a town in Chungnam prov-ince. The town was named after the Great King Sejong in the Chosun Dynasty: a Korean sovereign state that lasted approximately five centuries

Current President Lee MB is trying to change the existing plan structured around relocating several government of-fices to the city (drafted by ex-Presient Roh MH)

Proponent of original plan: Necessary for regional devel-opment

Opponent: Partitioning of the capital would weaken Seoul’s competitiveness

Impact of Smart phone on Twitter style Twitter users are more likely to send socio-

emotional content related to self-presence rather than social information sharing (Naaman, Boase & Lai, 2010)

We examined whether the messages sent from mobile devices tended to be shorter in terms of the length and more interactive (the use of hashtag, mention, reply, retweet)

Qualitatively, we investigated if the messages sent from mobile devices were self-focused, less syntactically complex, playful, and contained more phatic communi-cation.

Communication style related to Sejong city project

Device Tweets Retweets Reply Mention Hashtag Link Length

Mobile 274158

(57.66%)

26

(9.49%)

19

(6.93%)

8

(2.92%)

85

(31.02%)102

Mobile & Web

12846

(35.94%)

19

(14.84%)

3

(2.34%)

3

(2.34%)

36

(28.13%)101

Web 868208

(23.96%)

61

(7.03%)

23

(2.65%)

48

(5.53%)

457

(52.65%)92

TwitKr 691413

(59.77%)

41

(5.93%)

55

(7.96%)

27

(3.91%)

213

(30.82%)122

Not available 176

84

(47.72%)

17

(9.66%)

8

(4.55%)

31

(17.61%)

62

(35.23%)107

Total 2137909

(42.54%)

164

(7.67%)

108

(5.05%)

117

(5.47%)

853

(39.92%)

Average 104.8

Impact of Smart phone on Twitter style Our results show that 72.95% (1,559) of the

2,137 tweets were posted from the web (i.e., Twitter website: 868 tweets, Twtkr: 691 tweets)

Other postings were from mobile devices, users of which tended to send replies (26 tweets, 9.49%)

This might imply that interactive communica-tions happened more frequently when using mobile devices

Regarding the length of a tweet, we did not find significant differences between devices

Source Tweet

twtkr 926 Web파랑새 150 Mobileweb 137 Web

twitaddons 77 WebTwitBird 37 Mobile

Twitter for iPhone 28 Mobiletwtbiz 3 Web

foursquare 3 Mobilemobile web 3 Mobile

코리안트위터스 1 Web

Twilk.com 1 Web

De-vice

Tweets

Retweets

Re-ply

Men-tion

Mo-bile

221(16%)

10(16%)

162(18%)

19(10%)

Web 1145(84%)

52(84%)

736(82%)

162(90%)

SUM 1366 62 898 181

Device %Mobile 16.17%

Web 83.82%

De-vice

Tweets

Retweets

Re-ply

Men-tion

Mo-bile

221(100%)

10(4.52%)

162(73.30%)

19(8.60%)

Web 1145(100%)

52(4.54%)

736(64.28%)

162(14.15%)

Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry & Fisheries of Korea 농림수산식품부

What does ‘SMART’ stand for? Small Mobile And Retweet/Reply Timely

The Short Lifespan of a Tweet: Retweets Only Happen Within the First Hour

Does Smart Networking promote Citizen-ship? Free, easy online networking via social media

allows smartizens to become democratic? Allows the creation of Habermas’s free discussion

Public Sphere? Sunstein’s Republic.com 2.0 argues (from a

U.S. perspective) Cyber-balkanization the Internet supports diversity, but individuals choose to cocoon themselves in areas

of agreement, the net result is protection from exposure from dif-

fering opinions = the death of democracy

Five Politicians’ Following-Based Ego Networks

Size of node

Color of node

Number of fol-lowers

1.5 Yellow 0 to 10,0003.0 Purple 10,001 to 100,0003.5 Pink 100,001 to

1,000,0004.0 Blue More than

1,000,000

Diagram 1. Five Politicians’ Following-Based Ego Net-works The size and color of each node corresponds to the number of followers as follows:

GG Kang HR Won

KW Na DY Chung HC Noh한나라당 진보신당 민주노동당 민주당

Five Politicians’ Follower-Based Ego Networks

Size of node

Color of node

Number of followers

1.5 Yellow 0 to 10,0003.0 Purple 10,001 to

100,0003.5 Pink 100,001 to

1,000,0004.0 Blue More than

1,000,000

Diagram 2. Five Politicians’ Follower-Based Ego Networks The size and color of each node corre-sponds to the number of followers as fol-lows:

GG Kang

KW Na

HR Won

DY Chung HC Noh한나라당 진보신당 민주노동당 민주당

Overlaps in terms of Twitter Followers

HR Won

GG Kang

DY Chung

HC Noh

KW Na

한나라당 (GNP)

진보신당 (PNP)

민주노동당 (MDP)민주당 (MP)

HR Won

GG Kang

DY Chung

HC Noh

KW Na

Overlaps in terms of Twitter Followings

한나라당

진보신당

민주노동당

민주당

Appendix: Twitter VS Me2Day

- Twitter: Launched in March 2006, a global service but very popular among Koreans

- Me2Day: Launched in February 2007, strongly promoted by the most popular Korean portal site Naver

Twitter vs Me2day

Twitter vs Me2day

ㅁ : Twitter - RT, Reply, Me2day – MeToo, Reply, Replay & Post ㅁ : Link

Twitter vs Me2day

출처 : 박정남 (2010), START 트위터와 미투데이

Service Twitter Me2day

Mood Mature, sincere, multifarious

Free, Fun, Young, Bright

Major User Group mid 20s ~ 40s (more male)

10s ~ 30s (more female)

Publishing Style Talk > Soliloquize Soliloquize > Talk

Communication Style

RT(ReTweet), Replay(=Mention)

Metoo, Reply, Reply&Post

Advantage

A plentiful content of the global services,

Numerous Applications,Mature Cultures

Korean Service, Connected to NAVER,Free connected with

Domestic mobile phone,

High quality of service

Networking method Follow Follow us + Subscribe

AcknowledgementResearch for this paper has been supported by the World Class University (WCU) program through the National Research Foundation of Korea, which is funded by the Ministry of Edu-cation, Science and Technology (No. 515-82-06574).

Based on ongoing research projects conducted with my colleagues and students at Yeung-Nam University