Departments: Korean Consumer & Society Social Media’s Impact on Policy Making (Age) 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-49 50-59 60 and above Source: National Election Commission (Aug 3, 2010). Press Release: “Analysis of Voting Rates in the 5th Nationwide Local Elections. ” October 2011 | SERI Quarterly | 125 Social Media’s Impact on Policy Making has also become a potential solution for Korea’s government to improve operations and address numerous issues. According to the 2011 IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook, Korea ranked 22nd to 30th in performance indicators like “effective implementation” and “transparency” of government policy.
Embracing social media can spur improvements in these areas by providing a fast and low cost way for governments to disseminate policy information, attain public feedback, and communicate with citizens. At the same time, social media comes with caveats for governments, as its open nature allows a single misstep to spread and multiply at rapid speed. This paper accordingly looks at social media’s impact on government policy making, and the likely government responses that can both leverage its advantages and minimize its uncertainties. lar have made it increasingly important in today’s policy making arsenal.
First, social media provides access to a broader range of opinions and issues than traditional media, and this access is nearly instantaneous. Micro-blogs like Twitter and Me2day and the increased uptake of sophisticated mobile devices allow anyone to publicly express their opinion by simply sending a brief message. Social media can also uncover issues that would be overlooked or ignored by more traditional means of gauging public opinion. Twitter users in Korea, for example, initiated a campaign to save a Korean underwater diving instructor who was falsely accused of murder inHonduras.
In November 2010, as a result of the campaign the instructor was found innocent and acquitted. Second, social media has stronger connectivity between users. With social media, it is easier than ever to share breaking news, broach a social issue, and exchange opinions in real time to a massive audience. In fact, on average any two random Twitter users have only four degrees of separation between them.
Social media’s ability to connect users has further grown with increasing interest and investment from existingSocIal MedIa and changeS In The PolIcy envIronMenT characteristics of Social Media Three characteristics of social media in particu|Figure 2 Korean Government Competitiveness Vis-a-vis Top Ranking Countries Singapore Denmark Sweden 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Adaptability of government policy Effective implementation of government policy Transparency of government policy 26th 22th 26th 30th Korea Singapore Bribes and corruption Source: International Institute for Management Development, 2011 IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook. 126 | www. seriquarterly. com PARK June |Figure The Changing Communications Structure between the Government and the Public Mass Media Mass Media Government Government media. The BBC, for example, now relies on social media to power its “User Generated Content Hub” to aggregate news from around the world.
Third, social media has reduced online anonymity. As real life networks migrate to the online world, people now need to be ever more careful of what they say. Social media users accustomed to “anything-goes” Internet anonymity are now learning to express their opinions carefully and avoid posting content that they do not want to be held accountable for. ures were retweeted among their young fans, increasing turnout among young voters significantly. Second, communication between the government and citizens has changed from indirect communication to direct contact.
The speed in which public opinion develops today is now vastly greater than it was only a few years ago. Rather than depending on mass media to get policy information, people can now directly express their views to politicians and civil servants on Facebook or Twitter.In the 2010 local government elections, 42 percent of Korea’s Twitter users said that they obtained information about candidates through social media rather than mass media. In 2009, Gordon Brown, then prime minister of the UK, began requiring public servants to use Twitter to check public feedback on government activities in real-time.
Brown gave specific guidelines on how to use Twitter, including use of colloquial English, sending at least two or three tweets a day, and spacing tweets at least 30 minutes apart.Lastly, the citizenry as a whole have become the main force of public opinion, unlike in the past, when the government and a few opinion leaders could dominate public discourse. Social media October 2011 | SERI Quarterly | 127 changes in the Political environment Social media’s restructuring of inter-personal communications is also revamping the political environment. A prime change is an increase in public participation.
In Korea, where peer pressure is a powerful motivating force, social media’s expansion into politics has spurred young people to vote, largely because their friends and role models are doing so.In the 2010 local government and by-elections this year, novelist Lee Oisoo and comedian/MC Kim Jae-dong posted pictures of themselves taken in front of a polling station on their Twitter pages. These pic- Social Media’s Impact on Policy Making has paved the way for “citizen journalists” and made it more difficult for officials to control information. Twitter for example, was first to break the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death, spreading awareness to 15 million people even before the US government publicly confirmed it. Thus, opinion leaders are now increasingly aware that they will be judged by the public about the information they provide.
This is not surprising, as citizens sharing information can often provide greater insight than officials themselves. For example, during Korea’s recent epidemic of foot and mouth disease, people using social networks compiled a national map of mass culling of livestock early this year. will now need to involve the public in the policy deliberation stage. Third, citizens will no longer be just “consumers” of public services but will become “prosumers” (i.
. both producers and consumers). Thus far, the public has been limited to expressing personal dissatisfaction about public services through a laborious process of filing civil petitions. Thanks to the popularity of social media, however, a new kind of civil activism is emerging; and more and more citizens can participate in the policy process by providing information to the government via social network services.
Numerous examples of social media induced change are emerging in the agenda-setting, adoption, execution, and evaluation stages of policy.In India, social activist Anna Hazarre succeeded in pressuring the Indian government to consider anti-corruption legislation. In April 2011, Hazarre fasted and details of his status were posted online, and millions of people on Facebook supported him. After four days, the Indian government acceded to his request, announcing that it would set up a public-private committee to discuss an anti-corruption act. In Canada, Vancouver held online public discussions on Facebook to help it devise its transport policy. In the Philippines, the Department of Finance now receives various tips on corruption and tax evasion on Facebook and Twitter.
hanges in the Policy-making Process The changed environment is bound to affect the policy-making process. First, agenda setting will be more individually-led rather than groupled. Without the help of intermediary groups, individual citizens will pressure the government to deliberate on specific issues by creating public opinion via social media. Second, there will be more “open sourced” or “crowd sourced” policy decisions. The government will increasingly adopt citizens’ ideas via social media in the policy proposal-making and decision stages.Before the arrival of social media, policy deliberation was traditionally led by government officials and expert groups in a closed-door process.
Public hearings were performed largely to obtain approval from relevant parties after policies had already been devised. With social media providing a new channel to express public opinion, however, governments SIde effecTS and alTernaTIveS In tandem with the opportunities presented by social media, governments also face new challenges. Most immediately, the rise of social media increases pressure on governments to en- It was Keith Urbahn, a secretary of Donald Rumsfeld, who presumably first tweeted the news that Bin Laden had been killed. See Gilad, L. (2011. 5.
6). “Breaking Bin Laden: Visualizing the Power of a Single Tweet”. 128 | www. seriquarterly. com PARK June gage in hasty and ill considered populism as they become increasingly exposed to rapidly changing public opinion. At the same time, social media’s ability to instantly spread allegations of corruption and malfeasance among political and business leaders can stoke the embers of social conflict.
Finally, social media is personal rather than institutional media, and allows messages to be distributed without screening, editing, or other forms of institutional control. Such characteristics can spread the ideological orientation of individuals far and wide. What, then, can be done to restrain populism and manage social conflicts? To deal with the challenge posed by social media, governments should turn to deliberating with the public on policy, rather than using social media as a simple gauge of public opinion. Turning to social media during the deliberation stage involves rational discussion about the merits of a particular policy.Institutionalizing social media based deliberation as a tool for decision making can protect Korea from the populist campaigns that social media might otherwise induce. Rational discussion about policy however, requires a populace that is up to the task.
Here, the arrival of social media suggests reforms beyond the policy sphere. Korea’s educational system, which is geared toward rote memorization and test-taking rather than creative and critical thinking, is not ideally suited to creating an electorate that can productively use social media in policy deliberations.To this end, social media presents an incentive to reform education towards “social literacy,” including respect for differences of opinion, and critical and creative thinking. This will require rethinking of the education system as much as it does the policy making process. Ultimately social media presents as much potential for risk, through the spread of rumors and distortions, as it does for new forms of participatory governance. Governments that want to understand the implications of social media must move beyond simply reacting to social media by incorporating and internalizing it as part of its basic processes.
Keywords Social media, smartphones, Twitter, Facebook, populism PARK June is a research fellow at SERI. His research interests include comparative politics and political economy. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Pittsburgh. Contact: jpark@seri. org October 2011 | SERI Quarterly | 129 Copyright of SERI Quarterly is the property of Samsung Economic Research Institute and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission.
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