What motivates Korea’s citizen journalists
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 19 September 2006 at 09:49
Tags: Journalism, OhmyNews
The more than 42,000 citizen journalists who contribute to the Korean web site OhmyNews are motivated by a desire to exercise their freedom of expression and sharing new knowledge with others, accourding to new research.
Surveying the motivations 192 OhmyNews contributors, Shaun W. Sutton of Leeds University concluded that Korean citizen journalists’ “strongest single motivating factor was to exercise freedom of expression and their most sought-after general gratification was information dispersal” — the creation of knowledge and its distribution to others.
But as has long been discussed, the study also suggested that social conditions unique to Korea might make it difficult to replicate the world’s most politically influential and commercially successful citizen journalism initiative elsewhere.
Korea’s world-leading level of broadband internet penetration and trust in the Internet as a source of information, resentment an entrenched, establishment-orientated mainstream press and a long-repressed desire for public participation in politics stemming from a protracted transition to democracy are essential to understanding the rise of OhmyNews, according to the study.
The full study can be downloaded as a PDF.
Tags: Journalism, OhmyNews
