ONLY FOUR YEARS after the greatest number of voters
in Korean history elected Park Geun-hye as the
country’s first female president in 2013, more than
one million people gathered for a candle-lit protest
in Seoul to also make her the first publicly ousted
president of South Korea (Korea hereafter). Amidst
these two forms of civic engagement—vote and
protest—is a new form of political communication
that gained limited attention but was also a surprise
to the Korean public. That is, a partic-
ular citizen watching a live broadcast
of the second hearing in the parlia-
mentary investigation into a politi-
cal scandal involving president Park
and Choi Soon-sil, her former confi-
dante, on December 7, 2016, alerted
a member of the country’s National
Assembly to alleged perjury by Kim
Ki-choon, a key political figure in the
Choi Soon-sil scandal, via instant
messenger KakaoTalk that immedi-
ately altered the probe. This message
had a stunning effect on the political
process and proved to be a landmark
not only in this case but in the trans-
formation of e-participation into a
popular form of political commu-
nication driven by information and
communications technology (ICT)
worldwide.
The emergence of e-participation
had toppled the traditional invisible
wall between ordinary citizens and
the National Assembly. The Internet
extended the exchange of information and thought among citizens,
planners, and decision makers
alike, 7 but individual citizens’ voices
only rarely reach the Assembly. The
tip-off message granted ordinary citizens influence comparable to that of
elected politicians in the country’s
political culture. More important,
public reporting of Kim Ki-choon’s
alleged perjury was led not by the
government but by ordinary citizens
through social media. But such citizen-led e-participation, unlike gov-ernment-led e-participation, has re-
What Motivates
a Citizen to Take
the Initiative in
e-Participation?
The Case
of a South Korean
Parliamentary
Hearing
DOI: 10.1145/3186276
Citizen-led initiatives via social media
yield political influence, including even
with a country’s top political leaders.
BY JUNYEONG LEE AND JAYLYN JEONGHYUN OH
key insights
˽ Information and communication
technology, including social media, live-streaming services, and digital archives,
supports citizen-led e-participation.
˽ Collective intelligence and prior
experience in online environments help
individual citizens gain influence in
parliamentary maneuvering and political
decision making.
˽ Politicians can nurture e-participation
among citizens who are motivated
by public debate and thus enabled by
communication technologies.
contributed articles
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