Journal article
Exuberant Politics on the Internet: Two Forms of Popular Politics in South Korea's 2008 "Beef Protests"
International journal of communication, Vol.11, pp.4118-4137
01/01/2017
Abstract
This study examines South Korea's "beef protests" of 2008, with a focus on how these Internet-born popular protests challenged and overcame a populism anchored in the political elite. In the 2007 presidential election, conservative Lee Myung-bak won a landslide victory with an appeal to national and individual prosperity. However, immediately after his election, a popular uprising took place in South Korea when Lee decided to import American beef despite broad concern about mad cow disease. This article examines the process whereby South Korea's young Internet users swiftly turned from advocates to critics of Lee and mobilized for nationwide protests against him and against the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement. Drawing from Jacques Ranciere's concepts of police and demos, I argue that the course of these events points to two dynamics of populism. First, populism succeeds when a politician or issue captivates public desires by metonymically embodying these desires. Second, in such cases, the public's desire cannot be fully represented or contained by traditional political institutions, and politics created from below lead to exuberant politics that defy institutional politics.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Exuberant Politics on the Internet: Two Forms of Popular Politics in South Korea's 2008 "Beef Protests"
- Creators
- Jiyeon Kang - Univ Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242 USA
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- International journal of communication, Vol.11, pp.4118-4137
- ISSN
- 1932-8036
- eISSN
- 1932-8036
- Publisher
- Usc Annenberg Press
- Number of pages
- 20
- Grant note
- Center for Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Iowa
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 01/01/2017
- Academic Unit
- Communication Studies
- Record Identifier
- 9984309652302771
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