Page 267 - Culture Technology Communication

250 Sunny Yoon

While celebrating the Kidnet movement like a ceremonial event,
Chosun Daily does not sufficiently consider the use value of either
the Internet in general or Kidnet in particular. There are very few
articles discussing educational usages and problems of young Ko-
rean Internet users. Nor does Chosun make much effort to help Ko-
rean children become Internet producers instead of simply
consumers: according to Table 2, there are only two articles regard-
ing the production of educational programs on Kidnet.
In short, Korean journalism does not consider the use value of
the Internet, nor does it attempt to utilize the Internet as a partici-
patory communication medium. On the contrary, it contributes to
commercializing the Internet by advertising industrial support and
promoting competition among the newspaper industry.
Confronting journalistic competition with regard to Internet
dissemination, citizens are organizing grassroots social movements
in cyberspace. On Chollian, the most widely circulated PC commu-

Table 3
Public Bulletin Boards on Kidnet
We Oppose Kidnet
Title Kidnet Corner
Opposition
Media conglomerate 23 10
Advertising 4 1
Negative effect on education 13 10
Cultural dependency 2 3
Demise of kid culture 10 6
Better education first 30 30
Language problem 7 6
Harmful information 3 2
Inequality 11 7
The Internet as useless 10 2
Developing hardware, software 5 23
Other 4 20
Support
With no reservation 3 15
Educational materials 4 2
Hopeful ideas 6 6
Creative education 8 5
Early education 6 17
Opinions of Reporters 5 5
Others 32 113
TOTAL 186 284