Document details

The Birth of Social Election in South Korea, 2010-2012

Berlin: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) (2012), 44 pp.

Contains bibliogr. p. 40

Series: fesmedia Asia Series

Signature commbox: 315:70-Politics 2012

"By getting connected with each other again, social media users seem to have more incentive to vote because approval by friends becomes an integral part of benefits from voting. In South Korea this phenomenon came at the dusk of the 1987 regime, which is a conservative representation system where younger, less wealthy, and progressive voters are under-represented and, thus, have little incentive to vote. Voter turnout going up again because of social media after twenty five years of going down has reversed a series of election outcomes since 2010. We pay special attention to Twitter which has played most of the political role for the past two years. The election law, last amended when there was no such thing as social media, failed to catch up with the political realities. Is democracy after Twitter going to be qualitatively different from the 1987 regime (i.e., democracy after democratization)? The reason to believe in the affirmative is that it solves at least partially the political representation problem inherent in the old system. The reason to remain pessimistic is that the offline party organizations, even democratic ones, tend to move in their vested interest rather than incorporating the new political energy accumulated in the social networks." (Abstract)