The appropriation of traditional media content in online contexts: A South Korean textbook case

ABSTRACT

This study explores the appropriation of traditional media content in an online protest context and highlights the significance of legacy media to activists’ communication practices online. Appropriation refers to the direct transfer of content originally produced in traditional media into social media posts. Focusing on the massive 2015 South Korean protests in opposition to the government’s decision to issue a single state-history textbook, a content analysis of activists’ posts on three social media platforms finds that activists utilize traditional media content to a greater degree than personalized action frames. Interviews suggest that activists are motivated to appropriate legacy media’s content by their need for legitimacy and expediency. Platform type was closely associated with the frequency and type of activists’ appropriation.

KEYWORDS:

• Appropriation
• social movement
• South Korea
• connective action
• collective action
• social media

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Yoori Yang (M.A., University of California, Santa Barbara) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of California Santa Barbara. Her research interests lie primarily in social movements, collective action, connective action and corporate social responsibility in South Korean context and digital age.

Cynthia Stohl (Ph.D., Purdue University) is a distinguished professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the past director of the Center for Information Technology and Society at UCSB. Dr. Stohl’s most recent work addresses a diversity of network and collective action organizations in the global context, focusing specifically on the role of new communication technologies in contemporary organizing.