Futures of Learning

Photo entitled Bateria Campeã, Published under a CC license by André Cherri

On February 20, 2009 millions of Brazilians began gathering throughout the country to celebrate carnaval, a four-day event that occurs each year in the days leading up to Ash Wednesday [fn1]. Known throughout the world for its colorful costumes, energetic music and dance competitions, Brazilians took to the streets of the nation’s mega centers of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Salvador as well as the smaller towns and cities which constitute much of Brazil’s interior. As the festivities commenced, images of outrageous and humorous costumes and scenes from school and street parades began making their way from the mobile phones and digital cameras of Brazilians (and foreign tourists) to Flickr, Fotolog and Orkut profiles (for examples, see Góes 2008). The viral spread of Brazilian carnaval within and outside of Brazil reflects the ease with which Brazilians have merged one of the most important cultural festivals with new media. In this introduction, I will provide a short overview of the new media landscape in Brazil, with particular attention to the social, economic, policy and telecommunications infrastructures that shape everyday practice.

Imagining and Enacting Free Culture
With the most internet users, cable TV subscribers and cell phones in Latin America, even an initial foray into Brazil’s new media landscape reveals how important national policies have become in the lives of Brazilians. What some supporters and critics have termed a leftist, techno-utopian approach to national development, the Brazilian government deregulated its telecommunications sector and encourages full competition in all areas. It also continues to be at the forefront of debates surrounding copyright and intellectual property in realms ranging from music and pharmaceuticals to the taxation on imported goods and proprietary software (McCann 2008).  Under the leadership of former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003) and current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil has been particularly receptive to a range of ‘edge’ practices, such as Open Source, Creative Commons and the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. A testament to the country’s bold approach to the ownership and use of culture, media and technology, Brazil was first country in the world to require open source products from the research institutes and organizations who received government funding for the purposes of software development (Benson 2005, McCann 2008).

The value attributed to open source platforms and other dimensions of “free culture” are closely intertwined with the government’s desire to address the nation’s vast inequities. According to the Department for International Development (United Kingdom), Brazil represents one of the most unequal countries in the world. Ten per cent of the population possess around 48 per cent of Brazil’s national income, and 20 per cent of the poorest members of Brazilian society only have access to 2.5 per cent of the national income. In other words, over 40 million Brazilians live on less than $US 2 per day (DfID suggests that 20 million are living on less than $US 1 per day, see DfID’s Development Challenge Document, DfID 2008). The contours of inequality in Brazil correspond with a complex configuration of race, gender, class and geography. The vast majority of Brazilians are of mixed heritage; this mixture, or creolization, includes descendants of Portuguese colonialists, former Africans slaves and indigenous Amerindians. In addition, Brazil possesses the largest communities of Italian and Japanese living outside of Italy and Japan, respectively. There is also a substantial population of immigrants from Germany and the Middle East. While events such as carnaval celebrate the nation’s rich cultural diversity, the Brazilian populations living in the North – Brazilians of (largely) African descent in the Northeast regions such as Bahia, and Amerindians in the isolated Northwestern regions – continue to live in some of the poorest conditions in the country; living conditions tend to improve in the southern regions of the country. In addition to the ethnic and regional inequities, class plays an important role in the geography of poverty in Brazil. According to the World Bank, there were 192 million people living in Brazil in 2006. Approximately 85 per cent of this population lives in an urban center, the most populous being São Paulo (around 11 million) and Rio de Janeiro (just over 7 million). Salvador, Brasília (the national capital), Fortaleza and Belo Horizonte all have populations between 2 and 3 million (Holston 1989). As centers for finance, petrol, service and culture, many of the nation’s wealthiest citizens who live in guarded compounds and high-rise apartment buildings in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Yet, a significant portion of the population also live in favelas, informal settlements or slums on the hills and outskirts of town that, while roughly proximate to the availability of work and other resources, are characterized by cramped, crowded living conditions and are not formally recognized by the Brazilian state (See Holston and Caldiera 2005, Holston 2008). Without the income to access private schooling and other outlets, many occupants and their families live in favelas for generations.

New Media, Technology and Digital Inclusion
The Brazilian government’s support of culture, education, new media and technology reflects the broader concern with social justice and the potential of new media and technology to bridge the social and digital divides prevalent throughout Brazilian society. Alongside investing in the training of Brazil’s middle and elite classes in national universities to work in biomedical, technology and petrol centers, the government has strongly supported efforts towards digital inclusion among the poorest segments of society. In 2006, the Brazilian government instigated a national computer-for-all program designed to make available minimum configuration desktop and notebook models with free/open-source software. Many of Brazil’s working poor were enticed by this relatively affordable program for a computer that could be paid in 24 installments of 50 to 60 Reais, or less than $US 20 per month. Whereas in 2005 only 16 per cent of Brazil’s population owned a computer (ITU 2008), by 2006 2.2 million Brazilians, primarily from the middle and lower-middle classes, acquired their first computer. According to the 2nd Survey on the Use of Information Technology and Communications in Brazil conducted by the Center for Information and Management of Ponto BR (a non-profit organization established to implement the decisions of the Internet Managing Committee) close to 20 per cent of the population own a computer at home (Lopes 2006).

Like computer ownership, the number of households with internet access via modem and landlines lingered at 14.5 per cent in 2006 (Lopes 2006); broadband internet access was even scarcer at 3.54 per cent (ITU 2008). In 2007, 20.54 inhabitants per hundred had fixed phone lines (ITU 2008); the price basket for mobile telephone service cost about $US 26.20/month, while it is about $US 15.60 for a residential fixed line and $US 10.10 for internet services (Cellular-News 2008). According to the Brazilian Institute of Information on Science and Technology, general access to the internet expanded by 39 per cent in 2006, thanks to an increase in the number of digital inclusion points (DIPs). DIPs are public places, set up by institutions ranging from the Brazilian government to private companies to NGOs, where people can access computers and the internet. In the São Paulo metropolitan area alone, over 21 million inhabitants have access to 4000 DIPs. In addition to increasing the accessibility to computers and DIPs, the country’s top three fixed-line telephone companies - Telefónica of Spain; Tele Norte Leste Participações, or Telemar; and Brasil Telecom - agreed to provide a dial-up Internet connection to participants for 7.50 Reais, or less than $US 3, a rate which, according to Benson (2005), could enable approximately 15 hours of surfing online. As I will discuss in greater detail in Friday’s post on New Media Production, the provisioning of access to computers, technology and information through telecenters, home computers and discounted rates on internet access represents an important route for digital inclusion and democratization.

Mobile phones have also opened up opportunities for digital inclusion. As of September 2008, 90.64 per cent of the population was covered by mobile signal and the mobile phone penetration rate was 73.2 per cent as of September 2008, which translates into 140.79 mobile phone subscribers. 81.1 per cent of subscribers take advantage of pre-paid services. Vivo, a company controlled by Portugal Telecom and Telefónica (one of the three largest telecom conglomerates in the world), accounts for 42.28 million mobile connections, followed by Claro and TIM with each about 35 million connections. GSM is most dominant technological standard, accounting for about 86.6 percent of mobile connections. Vivo is the sole CDMA provider and the 3G market is dominated by Motorola, Nokia and LG (Cellular-News 2008). While it is unlikely that the most disenfranchished Brazilians have gained full access to the expensive phones and plans associated with mobile internet, next week I will outline in the blog post on mobile phones the extent to which mobile phones have become transformational devices in facilitating connectivity as well as avenues for employment for poor residents living in favelas and other, more isolated areas where, before the arrival of the mobile phone, people lived without access to permanent or reliable forms of communication.

The Possibilities of New Media
While inequality continues to influence, and be reproduced through, the uptake of new media and technology in Brazil, there are also tremendous possibilities being piqued by the integration of mobile phones, computers, video games and the internet at all levels of Brazilian society as well as practices which challenge our conceptions of what is possible in and through new media. A testament to the innovation and potential of Brazil, Brazil is the first of four countries who Goldman Sachs termed “BRIC” countries (“Brazil”, “Russia”, “India” and “China”), or “emerging economies” that have the potential to become economic powerhouses by 2050. In Brazil’s case, the rich and varied natural resources present in the form of petrol and plants in the Amazon as well as an established financial and service culture are viewed as part of the infrastructure for this growth. With an official literacy rate of 93.2 per cent among youth (and 89 per cent overall literacy, see World Bank 2008)[ii], Brazil also possesses one of the fastest growing youth segments throughout the world. Since 1980 the youth population has grown by 22 per cent; 47 per cent of Brazil’s current population is under the age of 25 (Geraci and Chen 2007, using figures from the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population division). Like other countries with large youth demographic (under the age of 25), unemployment remains a key issue. 18.1 per cent of youth between the ages of 15 and 24 are unemployed and close to 23 per cent of Brazilian women in this age group are unemployed (United Nations Millenium Development Indicators 2008). Many of the Brazilian government’s social justice agendas are designed to enhance and support the infrastructure and the training of its’ diverse and polarized population.

Over the next three weeks I will be focusing upon Brazilian’s use of new media by attending to the dynamic relationship between practice and the technological, bureaucratic and social infrastructures that shape everyday usage, drawing connections between Brazilian’s new media practices and the spirit of play, creativity and resistance characteristic of carnaval and other dimensions of Brazil’s new media culture. I will begin on Wednesday with a discussion of internet practices. The following week will discuss new media production online and in educational contexts and gaming. During the final week I will focus upon the mobile telephony landscape in Brazil. As with the blogs on India, Korea and China, I look forward to your thoughts and feedback.

Endnotes:
i. “Carnaval” is the Portuguese spelling of Carnival.
ii. The gross primary, secondary and tertiary school enrollment hovers between 88 to 90 per cent (World Bank 2008).

References:

Benson, Todd (2005) Brazil: Free Software’s Biggest and Best Friend. New York Times 29 May 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/29/technology/29computer.html, Accessed January 20, 2009.

Cellular-News. 2008. Brazil 2008 Customer Numbers. Cellular-News October 22, 2008. http://www.cellular-news.com/story/34268.php, Accessed December 5, 2008.

United Nations Millenium Development Indicators, July 2008 Data. http://millenniumindicators.un.org/unsd/mdg/Data.aspx, Accessed January 20, 2009.

Geraci, John and Lisa Chen (2007) Meet the Global Net Generation. Paper from the New Paradigm Learning Corporation.
http://www.newtmn.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/meet_the_global_net_generation.pdf, Accessed February 5, 2009.

Góes, Paula. 2008. The Greatest Street Party on Earth: The Brazilian Carnival Global Voices February 28, 2009, http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/02/28/the-greatest-street-party-on-earth-the-brazilian-carnival/, Accessed March 1, 2009

Holston, James. 2008. Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Holston, James. 1989. The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasília. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Holston, James and Teresa P. R. Caldeira. 2005. State and urban space in Brazil: from modernist planning to democratic interventions. In Global Anthropology: Technology, Governmentality, Ethics, 393-416. Aihwa Ong and Stephen J. Collier, editors. London: Blackwell.

International Telecommunications Union. 2008. ICT Indicator Database http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/DisplayCountry.aspx?countryId=27, Accessed March 5, 2009.

McCann, Bryan. 2008. The Throes of Democracy: Brazil Since 1989. London: Zed Books.

World Bank. 2008. World Bank Data and Statistics. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/DATASTATISTICS/0,,contentMDK:20535285~menu
PK:1192694~pagePK:64133150~piPK:64133175~theSitePK:239419,00.html, Accessed February 27, 2009.

The convergence of consuming and producing digital media has been termed “prosuming” (Lim and Nekmat 2008). This practice has been democratized with the increasing availability of technology tools to (young) Indians from all socio-economic strata. While findings avenues for creative expression is at the heart of prosuming, the objectives differ depending on who is doing the prosuming. For more affluent Indian youth it is often tied to commercial ends that try to capitalize on the growing middle-class Indian youth market and its potential for technology and other companies. On the other hand, enabling poorer young Indians to produce digital media is seen as a way of giving them a voice to express their experiences and attitudes about their lives and neighborhoods. While academic research on the commercial use is entirely absent, its development counterpart has given rise to a body of literature that is primarily aimed at practitioners and is often published through development organizations, such as United Nations’ outlets.

Commercial Production

Exemplary of the use of digital media production for market and corporate ends is the Mobile Youth project, (http://www.mobileyouth.org), an international youth marketing and branding company that uses ethnographic research and street interviews as “the art behind youth marketing that is getting the real views of your customers” for paying clients such as Vodafone, Disney, MTV, Telefonica, Intel and the European Commission. The Indian section was shot by a young Indian named Amit in Bangalore in January 2009 and can be accessed on mobile youth’s utube channel (http://www.youtube.com/mobileyouth ) . Head shots of the half-dozen young men, almost always with scooters in the background, talking about their mobile phones, service providers and (dis)satisfaction with both, are interspersed with one-liners such as “By 2012, one in 5 of the world’s mobile owning youth will live in India, “There are more mobile owning Indian youth than people in the UK,” and “500 million Indian youth have yet to buy their first mobile phone.” These statements serve as a constant reminder of the size and potential of the Indian youth mobile, and by extension new media technology, market.

A slightly different example of the commercial application of digital media production is the company Electronic Youth Media (http://www.electronicyouthmedia.com/), which was started by two Indian teenagers last year. At the heart of the company is a ‘productive networking’ web site called youthportal, although the fact that it is still under construction does not bode well for the fate of the company. The site’s aim was to target ‘career-oriented’ Indian youth by providing them with features helping the “betterment of their future.” Once again, new media technologies are regarded by, and presented to, young Indians as a means to economic advancement and livelihood improvement. It is here where the commercial use of new media production intersect with more explicit developmental purposes.

Giving Voice

In the development area, digital media production projects are rarely pursued for their own ends, but are situated within a larger context, where they address questions of social, cultural and political relevance. One such program is Mapping the Neighborhood, an initiative of the Centre for Science Development and Media Studies and funded by the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India. The project uses a customized GIS software for hand-held computers that allows participating children to produce community maps, and in the process gather relevant information about the locality. These information in turn inform decision-making, planning and development purposes at the community level (Asthana 2006). The aim of the project is to combine non-formal, participatory learning with community engagement through the use of ICT. Schools participating in the project have also created their own websites.

Another way to foster children’s online participation is through e-literacy story books (Arora 2008). Arora’s analysis focuses on the books’ narratives and potential for participatory development. Relatedly, there are a number of media programs that aim to give children the opportunity to express themselves, often through more traditional media such as community newspapers, radio programs and theater productions (eg. Butterflies Alternate Media http://www.butterflieschildrights.org/media.asp). The Slum Jagattu Media group publishes a monthly magazine giving young people living in slums the opportunity to make their voices heard. Thanks to a grant from the Adobe Corporation’s Youth Voices program, the group has expanded into visual media, specifically documentary video. Participating students, ranging from 15 to 21 years of age, researched the history of slums in Bangalore as compared to the image of the city as an international destination(http://media.iearn.org/ayv/sites/SlumJagattuMediaGroup).

This project was part of a the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN), which is a “global network that enables teachers and youth to use the Internet and other technologies to collaborate on projects that enhance learning and make a difference in the world” (http://www.iearn.org/). The Adobe Youth Voices videos were screened as part of iEARN’s India national conference, which brought together 130 youth and their teachers in May 2008. IEARN is only one example of a growing number of global sites that use new media technologies to encourage young people to form virtual collaborations for a better world, (see also Taking it Global (http://www.tigweb.org/). These sites combine social networking and digital media production to mobilize young people around the world, and Indian youth are involved in all of these initiatives.

Perhaps the best-known digital media production program is called cybermohalla and was established in 2001 as the result of a collaboration between Sarai, the new media initiative of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies, one of India’s leading research institutes, in Delhi, and Akur, an NGO in Delhi (Lim and Nekmat 2008, Asthana 2006). Cybermohalla (hindi for cyberneighborhood) is a network of three locality labs in informal and resettlement colonies in Delhi, which over the past seven years have brought together close to 450 male and female participants, mostly dropouts, between the ages of 15 and 25. These young people work with a variety of traditional and multimedia tools to develop, capture and communicate their perspectives about the locales in which they live, which serve as metaphors for “publicness” (Asthana 2006: 48, Lim and Nekmat 2008). The young people chronicle their lives in the neighborhoods in blogs (for example http://nangla.freeflux.net/blog/). There are also three books collecting conversations, blog entries, an animation CD and post cards. The cybermohalla website has a section called Tech Conversations, where young people reflect on their encounters with technology and how it shapes their relationship with the neighborhood around them (http://www.sarai.net/practices/cybermohalla/commoning/tech-manuals). Participants also make videos using digital cameras and mobile phones, animation and animated stories using GIMP (a GNU Image manipulation program), and recordings of conversations and sounds.

Cybermohalla has been analyzed as the emergence of a cyber-public imagined community within the Indian cultural context (Nayar 2008) and as a way to teach media literacy skills through raising cultural competencies (Lim and Nekmat 2008). More broadly, it has been used to sketch a theory of new media that addresses the potential of digital technologies as “a staging space for activism and protests,” not only represented in a “de-materialized realm of free floating information” but in a very immediate and material context (Asthana 2007). While the spaces for dialogue that have been created for the young, disenfranchised Cybermohalla participants are thought to create a forum for collective action (Asthana 2006), this potential seems to be subverted by the ways in which these participants have been cordoned off from their wider society. Apparently, outsiders have been denied access to the labs because they would disrupt their creative energy (Lovink 2006), and even the larger Sarai community has not been included into the dialogue of the cybermohalla youth.

The use of digital media production as a way of giving voice to disenfrachised people can be seen most directly in the Finding a Voice: Making Technological Change Socially Effective and Culturally Empowering project by Jo Tacci and her colleagues from Queensland University of Technology in Australia. Finding a Voice examined, through the use of ethnographic action research and participatory content creation, “how creative engagement with ICT can be both effective and empowering for positive social change” in marginalized communities across Asia (http://www.findingavoice.org/). The project was funded in part by UNESCO and the UNDP and had five sites in India, ranging from public computer centers in Kerala to a TV station in Andhra Pradesh to the Gender Resource Center in Delhi and two community radio stations in Uttarakhand. The publications resulting from the project have been mainly aimed at practitioners, policy strategists and decision makers (Tacci and Kiran 2008, Watkins and Tacci 2008, Skuse et al 2007). This attention to the empowerment potential of new media production is the focus of most academic publications analyzing its use towards development ends, and can partly be explained by many of these project being funded by government and development organizations, with an eye toward achieving concrete social ends. However, emerging explorations of their potential to inform the academic discourse of new media studies provides promising examples for further research and analysis (Nayar 2008, Asthana 2007).

References Cited:

Arora, P. (2008). Instant Messaging Shiva, Flying Taxis, Bil Klinton and More: Children’s Narratives from Rural India. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 11 (1), 69-86.

Asthana, S. (2006). Youth Media: A research study on 12 initiatives from around the developing and underdeveloped regions of the world. New York: UNESCO. Available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001492/149279e.pdf

Asthana, S. (2007). Sketching a Theory of New Media: The Case of Cybermohalla from India. Paper presented at MiT5 conference.

Lim, S. and E. Nekmat. (2008). Learning through Prosuming: Lessons from Media Literacy Programs in Asia.” Science, Technology and Society, 13(2), 259-278.

Lovink, G. (2006), Revisiting Sarai: Five Years of New Media Culture in India.” Sarai Waag Exchange Platform. Available at http://waahsarai.waag.org/?p+71

Nayar, P. (2008). New Media, Digitextuality and Public Space: Reading Cyber-mohalla. Postcolonial Text 4(1). Available at http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/view/786/521

Skuse, A. et al (2007) “Poverty and Digital Inclusion: Preliminary Findings of Finding a Voice.” New Delhi: UNESCO.

Tacci, J. and MS. Kiran (eds.) (2008) Finding a Voice: Themes and Discussion. New Delhi: UNESCO.

Watkins, S. and J. Tacci (eds) (2008) Participatory Content Creation for Development: Principles and Practices. New Delhi: UNESCO.

In 2001, a series of high school girls’ eccentric romance story, That Bastard was Cool (Geu Nomeun Meosisseosda), sparked teenage readers to flock into Daum Internet café. It was the beginning of Internet novel syndrome. The phenomenal success of this idiosyncratic and unconventional novel establishes its author, a sixteen-year-old high school girl whose Internet ID and penname were Gwiyoni (which literally means ‘Cute One’), as the icon of youth Internet culture. That Bastard was Cool scored 8 million views online, sold 500,000 copies when published as a print book later, and eventually was made into a movie in 2004. Its popularity even crossed the border to nearby Asian countries including Japan, China, Taiwan, and Thailand where the popularity of the Korean Wave was surging to its peak. Gwiyoni herself joined the so-called league of ‘Korean Wave Stars’ who enjoyed widespread fandom overseas. Following up That Bastard was Cool, Gwiyoni published five more Internet novels until 2006. Most of her novels have been adapted to movies that target the teenage girl market by starring popular young actors: Seduction of Wolf (Neukdaeui Yuhok; English movie title: Romance of Their Own) and That Bastard was Cool (English movie title: The Guy) in 2004, Doremipasolasido in 2008, and To You currently under production.

The popularity of Gwiyoni’s short, comical, lighthearted, episodic stories about everyday school life and teenage romance not only shook the professional literature community but also the popular media. In fact, Gwiyoni syndrome did not come out of the blue. Before WWW was introduced to Korea, several pre-internet novels, with similar styles and subjects, attracted young readers to a cyber space that was running on Telnet system (PC Tongsin in Korean) in the early 1990s. Gwiyoni syndrome brought out this underground youth subculture, particularly girls’ subculture, to the surface of public discourse (Kim & Kim, 2004).

Most of all, Gwiyoni’s novels were severely criticized and frowned upon by adults due to her constant usage of informal and colloquial languages, internet idioms, foul expression, and emoticons – all in violation of traditional language structure. However, Gwiyoni’s violation of the linguistic code was not new but familiar to young people. Gwiyoni Syndrome is significant in that it represents the migration/expansion of youth linguistic code that young people constantly create and share with their peers through SMS of mobile phone and Internet chats in their everyday life (Choi, 2003). This trend of sharing new linguistic codes within their intimate networks dates back to the popularity of Tongsin Eoneo (Internet Communication Idioms) in the times of beepers and early Internet community. While Gwiyoni’s informal use of language mostly consists of Tongsin Eoneo, there is also a popular trend of using more radical and broken form of language, which is called Oegyeeo (Alien Words). The creation of and the sharing of Oegyeeo tend to be exclusively limited to young people’s intimate networks (mostly, early teens) or special online communities such as ‘Teusumunja Manddang’ (Special Words Heaven, Daum), which has more than 1 million members. The level of deconstruction for Oegyeeo, which dissects and fabricates a grammatical system while mix-and-matches foreign words, is so radical that ordinary Koreans cannot understand or decipher their meaning (Yoo, 2003). In this sense, Choi argues that the Gwiyoni syndrome illustrates the broader changes in culture, from “Print literature based” to “Electronic literature based,” (Cho, 2007) and the advent of a new form of youth digital storytelling.

In a broader context, Internet novel syndrome signaled the expansion of girl’s participatory fandom culture in online space, which already existed before Internet in the form of fanzine (fan magazine) and/or fan art. Right before Gwiyoni syndrome, writing and sharing fanfics (fan fictions) about pop stars (mostly male idol stars) emerged highly visible activities across Internet fan cafes. Daum alone hosted around 9241 fanfic cafes and the largest one had over 300,000 members in 2003. Just like the Gwiyoni syndrome, girls’ fanfic writing also came under public scrutiny, but for a different reason. In 2000, the Ministry of Information and Telecommunication introduced new online content rating system for youth protection and fanfics, which often contain the story about homosexual relationship, were selected as harmful contents to censor. As fangirls organized online protests against contents censorship through Internet cafés, girls’ writing culture suddenly emerged as a hot topic in popular media (Jo & Kim, 2005). These examples demonstrate how Internet provides an alternative space and effective tools for Korean girls to create “communities of fantasy”; those in constant struggle with cultural authorities (Kim & Kim, 2004).

As image producing technologies - such as digital camera, mobile phone camera, and editing softwares/applications - became widely available, literary form of youth play was replaced by various multimedia productions. Creating and circulating fun content such as parody pictures, often with political satire, emerged as a representative of online play culture. Two notable examples are Yeopgi Syndrome and JJang syndrome. Originally, the term Yeopgi referred only to ‘weird, uncanny, pervert or frightening phenomena’, but the term now indicates all weirdly funny things and operates as a code of light humor among Korean youth since 2000. All sorts of media contents – pictures, video clips, and literatures – with the Yeopgi code populated online space, feeding young people’s insatiable appetite for unique fun: certain internet cafes such as ‘DC inside’ acquired new reputation for their famous Yeopgi contents. The other example is the Jjang (the best) syndrome, which involves online voting by netizens on uploaded self-photos, which often becomes a “gateway towards stardom”(Choi, 2006). Various types of jjangs, such as uljjang (person with the best face) and mom- jjang (person with the best physique), have become “catchphrases in society, entertainment business and other areas” in contemporary Korea (Choi, 2006: 180).

Recently, various forms of contents produced by netizens are touted in the name of UCC (User Created Contents). In most cases, UCC refers to shared video contents in online space. As major portals open special services for UCC, following on the successful models of UCC sites like Pandora TV, it became a hot item in current mediaspace in Korea. Initially, UCC fever is largely based on the prevalent and notorious P2P file sharing culture. In the past, free/illegal downloading and repurposing were adopted as alternative tactics to share commercially unavailable contents due to limited access to foreign media contents and/or inefficient distribution systems. While media industry is slowly shaping new business models to counteract this practice, the active reappropriation and consumption of popular cultural contents from overseas (particularly, Japanese pop music/TV drama/animation) in the form of UCC is still widespread. For example, young Korean fans’ various fandom activities around trans-Asian television drama contents form a significant part of UCC sites (Kim & Lee, 2005).

Researches show that women, especially female college students, are more active in producing and consuming UCC (Yim, 2008). It is noted that the central motivation to create and share UCC is ‘self-expression’ and ‘getting recognition from others’ (Sung & Lee, 2007). Still, 90 percent of UCC is repurposed works out of existing media contents. In this sense, the significance of UCC culture lies more in that it represents the decentralized mode of media distribution (Jeon, 2008). This aspect of UCC, as a potentially democratic media form, becomes more apparent when it serves a journalistic purpose. Indeed, the social implication of UCC, as an emerging form of journalism to monitor and engage both macro and micro-level social issues, is one of the widely discussed topics in Korea (Kim, 2008; Kang, 2007; Lee & Kim, 2007). During the 2006 presidential election campaign, UCC appeared as the preferred tool for expressing political views, especially among college students (Ban & Kim, 2007).

However, as the cultural influence of UCC is increasing, the debate over its legitimacy as a viable media form is also intensifying. Various issues, such as policies and regulations on UCC for youth protection and legal copyrights, are still unresolved. It has become a daily battle between the major portals who regularly monitor illegal ripping of media contents, media producers who seek for additional profits through ‘one-content-multi-use’ strategies, and bloggers who want to repurpose these media contents. In the end, although debates about whether these syndromes actually reflect young people’s productive use of new media technology still continue, these various forms of syndromes demonstrate that young peoples’ reappropriation of media contents with their newly acquired technological mastery have become a predominant practice in Korean online space.

References

English Sources

Choi, J. (2006). Living in Cyworld: Contextualizing Cy-ties in South Korea. In A. Bruns & J. Jacobs (Eds.), Uses of Blogs. (pp. 173-186). New York: Peter Lang.

Korean Sources

Ban, H., & Kim, S. J. (2007).  Dongyongsang UCC yiyongwa Jeongchi Hengtee gwanhan Yeongu: Dehaksengdeuleui UCC yiyonggwa Jeongchi News Yiyongeul Jungsimeuro (A Study of Relationship between UCC Usage and Political Behavior: Focus on College Student Voters` Usage of UCC and Political News). Cyber Communication Studies, 22(0), 123-166.

Cho, H. (2007). Munja Munhakeseo Jeonja Munhakeuro (From Print Literature to Electronic Literature). Seoul, Korea: Hangil Publisher.

Choi, M. (2003). N-sedewa Internet soseuleui Nolli -Gwiyeonieui Soseuleul Jungsimeuro (N-Generation and the Logic of Internet Novels - Centering on Gwiyeoni’s Novels). Public Narrative Studies, 10, 34-63.

Jeon, G. (2008). Cybergongganeui Seroun Sotong, UCC: Dongyeongsang UCCeui Textjeok Teukjinggwa Munhwajeok Hameuieh gwanhan Yeongu (A Study on the Textuality and the Cultural Implications of Video UCC). Cyber Communication Studies, 25(2), 337-370.

Jo, H., & Kim, J. (2005). Cheongsonyeun Mania Munhwaeui Siltewa Jeongchekgwaje (Present of Youth Fandom Culture and Policy Issues). Korea: National Youth Policy Institute.

Kang, J. (2007). UCC Yeongsang Munhwaeui Hameuiwa Munjejeom Yeongu: Simcheung Interviewreul Yiyonghan Dehaksengui Insiksarereul Jungsimeuro (Study on Meanings and Issues Related to UCC Visual Culture: Cognition Case Study by depth Interview with University Students). Korean Broadcasting & Telecommunication Studies, 21(6), 9-43.

Kim, H., & Kim, M. (2004). Fapiceui Sengsangwa Sobireul Tonghe bon Sonyeodeuleui Seong Fantasywa Jeongchijeok Hameui (A Fantasy of Fanfic and the Politics). Korea Journalism Studies, 48(3), 330-478.

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