Page 276 - Culture Technology Communication

Internet Discourse 259

The young generation of Koreans is mobilized by journalism.
For this new generation, the Internet is both a medium of resistance
and a potential tool of upward mobility in the future. They find new
identities in the cyberspace. Although they are a minority, one con-
trolled by adults, in cyberspace, the young generation defeats the old
one. It is an experience of deconstructing authority in reality.
Constructing an alternative identity, however, cannot be accom-
plished without struggle. Korean students participate in symbolic
struggles while using the Internet as a strategy. The habitus of the
virtual world system offers diverse possibilities the new generation
of Koreans. Young people both conform to the dominant discourse,
and at the same time resist the dominant power at the micro-level.
This ethnographic study demonstrates the concrete process of sym-
bolic struggles of Korea’s new generation.

Notes

1. Bourdieu defines the concept of habitus as follows:

The structures constitutive of a particular type of environment
(e.g., the material conditions of existence characteristic of class
condition) produce Habitus, systems of durable, transposable dis-
positions, structured structures predisposed to function as struc-
turing structures, that is, as principles of the generation and
structuring of practices and representations which can be objec-
tively “regulated” and “regular” without in any way being the
product of obedience to rules, objectively adopted to their goals
without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express
mastery of the operations necessary to attain them and, being all
this, collectively orchestrated without being the product of the or-
chestrating action of a conductor. (1977, 72)

2. Chosun claimed that Joong-Ang stole Chosun’s plan, and declared
IIE first. This was discussed on the bulletin boards.
3. Chosun and Joong-Ang Daily have more reports on the Internet
than Hanguerae and Dong-A. I will look at more specific issues on the for-
mer, i.e., Kidnet on Chosun and IIE on Joong-Ang.
4. I classified articles regarding teledemocracy and grassroots de-
mocracy under the category of “social movement.”
5. The online bulletin board, “We Oppose Kidnet” operated from
April 1, 1996, until July 19, 1996. In this bulletin board system, one person
can represent his/her opinions multiple times.