Networked Collective Actions: The Making of an Impeachment

The summer of 2016 saw one of the most significant citizen protests in the history of democratic South Korea, eventually culminating in the impeachment and conviction of then President Park Geun-hye for corruption. Concerns about the president’s behavior were raised in a polarized media environment with low public trust, where extreme right-wing media outlets amplified conspiracy theories and false claims in opposition to impeachment. How then was it possible for pro-impeachment protests seeking major social change to succeed? And why did pro-Park protesters and government efforts to defend Park ultimately fail?

Based on interviews with key players in the impeachment movement and original analyses of news reports and social media posts, Networked Collective Actions untangles the intricate interactions among different actors that were supported and sometimes constrained by the technological, socio-political, and legal environments in which they occurred. Moreover, Hyunjin Seo develops a theoretical framework for understanding collective actions in dynamic information ecosysems and analyzes how information consumption patterns might prompt someone to either immediately reject a certain piece of information or to reconsider and adopt that same information. Seo provides a nuanced examination of the role of journalism in a democracy where non-traditional intermediaries (e.g., social media influencers and bots) have emerged as important producers and filters of information, and in light of declining trust in news media.

Hyunjin Seo is Oscar Stauffer Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development in the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas as well as founding director of the KU Center for Digital Inclusion. She is also a faculty associate at
the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University. Her research examines how social collaborative networks facilitated by digital communication technologies affect social change, and she has published over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. Her research has been
funded by various federal agencies and foundations including National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Prior to her graduate studies in the United States, Seo covered politics and diplomacy for South Korean and international media outlets,
reporting on South Korea’s presidential office, six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear issues, and other major national and international events.