1. WEBOMETRICS
INSTITUTE
Online Social Networks, Communication, and
Trust: Looking for ‘smartness’ of Smartizens
Prof. Han Woo Park
http://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 Soci
ety

2. 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 2003년 저서 Smart Mobs:
The Next Social Revolution에서 나온 신조어로서, 인
터넷 및 모바일 매체를 비롯한 최근 디지털 기술의 공
통점은 “여러 이슈와 상황에 대해서 사람들이 과거에
는 가능하지 않았던 새로운 방식으로 함께 행동하도
록 촉진한다”(xviii)는 점을 강조하는 개념임

3. Smartizens are not always ‘smart’!
 As indicated they name, smart mobs are not
always beneficial. Lynch mobs and mobocracies
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

4. Collective action on Cyworld Minihompy
 Cyworld Minihompy: Launched in 2001, Cyworld
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 poste
d to Korean politicians on SNS Cyworld
 Sentiment analysis of textual comments
 Target link analysis of URLs contained in the comme
nts

5. Sample
 130 Korean National Assembly Members’ Cyworld M
inihompies.
 The data were collected April 2008 – June 2009
 153,602 comments were collected
 1,276 comments contained links

6. ①
②
③
The status of minihompy
①How active ②How famous ③How friendly
Gender
Name
Minihompy
Visitor count
xxx
사진
xxx
xxx

7. Minihompy
Logged in
User
xxx
사진
xxx

8. IP address
Cyworld-IP screen capture
Minihompy
사진
xxx
xxx
xxx
xxx
xxx

9. Cyworld-IP screen capture
Minihompy
사진
사진
xxx
xxx
xxx
xxx

10. Sentiment of Korean smartiznes on Cyworld
n = 650n = 756
female users posted relatively high levels of positive comments (75.5%
) than male users (67.3%), while male users made more negative com
ments (32.7%) than female users (24.5%).

11. 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.

12. 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

13. Category Domain IP Country Comments linking to Domain %
Video-sharing youtube.com United States 15 21.1
Video-sharing video.google.com United States 12 16.9
Government ams.usda.gov United States 5 7
Social welfare thesixsystem.net United States 5 7
News reuters.com United States 5 7
Homepage jameswon.award
space.us
Germany 3 4.2
Advertising danawa.tk Netherlands 2 2.8
News news.bbc.co.uk United Kingdom 2 2.8
News ireport.com United States 1 1.4
News iht.com United States 1 1.4
Total 51 71.8
Based on 51 (71.8%) of 71 links to overseas services
Where do Korean smartizens want take us?-Oversea

14. Strict Regulation and Cyber-Exile
 “Prohibition of Unlawful Distribution or Display of
Documents and Pictures”
 Article 93 of the Public Official Election Act
 No one may distribute or display any materials
containing endorsement of or opposition 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

15. What makes Korean smartizens hyperlink to?
Category Information
provision
Network
building
Identity/image
building
Audience
sharing
Message
amplification
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

16. Sentiment of Korean smartizens to link
candlelight protest
suicide of
ex-
president
Roh

17. Findings & Discussion
 Males are marginally more likely to comment on Cyw
orld Minihompies using links than females
 Minihompies managed by ruling politicians were foun
d to be of greater prominence than those of the oppo
sition parties
 Message Amplification and Network Building were fo
und to be the dominant purpose for submitting links
within user-generated comments.

18. 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).

19. Cyworld VS Me2Day VS Twitter

20. Twitter.com VS Twtkr.com
 Twtkr is a 3rd party service using Twitter API
 Twtkr.com is customized for sending and retrieving
Korean twitter messages, and Tweets containing
more than the standard 140 character limit are
possible
 Korean twitter messages are not well indexed in
Twitter.com and Twtkr.com provides a search option
for Korean Tweets

21. Twtkr.com VS Twitter.com interface
Original Twitter Interface
x
x
x

22. Sejong City Project
 The Sejong City project refers to relocating two-third of
administration departments, including the prime minister
and other ministers, to a town in Chungnam province. T
he town was named after the Great King Sejong in the C
hosun Dynasty: a Korean sovereign state that last
ed approximately five centuries
 Current President Lee MB is trying to change the existing
plan structured around relocating several government
offices to the city (drafted by ex-Presient Roh MH)
 Proponent of original plan: Necessary for regional
development
 Opponent: Partitioning of the capital would weaken
Seoul’s competitiveness

23. 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 mobi
le devices tended to be shorter in terms of the leng
th and more interactive (the use of hashtag, mention,
reply, retweet)
 Qualitatively, we investigated if the messages sent fr
om mobile devices were self-focused, less syntactic
ally complex, playful, and contained more ph
atic communication.

24. Communication style related to Sejong city project
Device Tweets Retweets Reply Mention Hashtag Link Length
Mobile 274
158
(57.66%)
26
(9.49%)
19
(6.93%)
8
(2.92%)
85
(31.02%)
102
Mobile
& Web
128
46
(35.94%)
19
(14.84%)
3
(2.34%)
3
(2.34%)
36
(28.13%)
101
Web 868
208
(23.96%)
61
(7.03%)
23
(2.65%)
48
(5.53%)
457
(52.65%)
92
TwitKr 691
413
(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 2137
909
(42.54%)
164
(7.67%)
108
(5.05%)
117
(5.47%)
853
(39.92%)
Average
104.8

25. 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 w
hich tended to send replies (26 tweets, 9.49%)
 This might imply that interactive communications
happened more frequently when using mobile device
s
 Regarding the length of a tweet, we did not find signi
ficant differences between devices

26. Source Tweet
twtkr 926 Web
파랑새 150 Mobile
web 137 Web
twitaddons 77 Web
TwitBird 37 Mobile
Twitter for iPhone 28 Mobile
twtbiz 3 Web
foursquare 3 Mobile
mobile web 3 Mobile
코리안트위터스 1 Web
Twilk.com 1 Web
Devi
ce
Tweets Retwe
ets
Reply Menti
on
Mobile 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%
Devi
ce
Tweets Retwe
ets
Reply Menti
on
Mobile 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

27. What does ‘SMART’ stand for?
 Small
 Mobile
 And
 Retweet/Reply
 Timely
The Short Lifespan of
a Tweet:
Retweets Only
Happen Within the
First Hour

28. Does Smart Networking promote Citizenship?
 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
differing opinions =
 the death of democracy

29. Five Politicians’ Following-Based Ego Networks
Size
of no
de
Color o
f node
Number of followers
1.5 Yellow 0 to 10,000
3.0 Purple 10,001 to 100,000
3.5 Pink 100,001 to 1,000,000
4.0 Blue More than 1,000,000
Diagram 1. Five Politicians’ Following-Based Ego
Networks
The size and color of each node corresponds to the
number of followers as follows:
GG Kang HR Won
KW Na DY Chung HC Noh
한나라당 진보신당 민주노동당 민주당

30. Five Politicians’ Follower-Based Ego Networks
Size of
node
Color of
node
Number of
followers
1.5 Yellow 0 to 10,000
3.0 Purple 10,001 to 100,000
3.5 Pink 100,001 to 1,000,00
0
4.0 Blue More than 1,000,00
0
Diagram 2. Five Politicians’ Follower-
Based Ego Networks
The size and color of each node
corresponds to the number of followers
as follows:
GG Kang
KW Na
HR Won
DY Chung HC Noh
한나라당 진보신당 민주노동당 민주당

31. Overlaps in terms of Twitter Followers
HR Won
GG Kang
DY Chung
HC Noh
KW Na
한나라당 (GNP)
진보신당 (PNP)
민주노동당 (MDP)
민주당 (MP)

32. HR Won
GG Kang
DY Chung
HC Noh
KW Na
Overlaps in terms of Twitter Followings
한나라당
진보신당
민주노동당
민주당

33. 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

34. Twitter vs Me2day

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

36. 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

37. Acknowledgement
Research 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 Education, Science and
Technology (No. 515-82-06574).
Based on ongoing research projects conducted with
my colleagues and students at YeungNam University