I like business trips. Lots of coffee and sitting in the hotel room. Great view and an open laptop.

Thought's after round three of the seminar. I skipped round two and took a nap.

From the Korean perspective, it seems that analysts and influential newsies are not sure that Korean blogging is going to affect the upcoming Korean presidential elections.

Just finished listening to a speech by Oh Yeon-ho, founder of citizen journalism in Korea and founder of OhMyNews.

He started off by introducing one of Time's People of the Year, Kim Hye Won, and he seemed at first very optimistic about the role of citizen journalism in the upcoming elections, but his message of hope and optimism became rather tempered by his call for four things that bloggers and citizen journalists need to address in order to be compelling creators of engaging content.

The four things that bloggers need, he said, are:

1. credibility
2. sustainability
3. influence
4. responsibility

My take on it was that it is no longer compelling (or has it been?) for a political message or an activist message on a blog to be just the message itself. As another participant at the forum, David Winston, said, the message being brought to the influential audience really needs to be a "branded" story. It has to be something that sticks.

For a while, in Korean politics (and I lay no claim to expert knowledge about Korea), the fact that a message was broadcast outside the walls of traditional media, meant that for a moment, liberals and progressives had a distinct advantage over conservatives. Another participant, Lew Seok-jin, a professor of political science at Sogang University, said that this web presence contributed to the progressive wins in the last two presidential elections in Korea.

But now, conservatives are beginning to join the web frenzy. Because both sides of the coin are being represented, it won't be enough to just have a message out there. Something that gets viewed 500,000 times does not necessarily mean that it is also a convincing and instructive argument or message.

It seems like Koreans are saying that they are entering an age where Korean blogging must have a responsible message and a real, "branded" identity.

As Oh said: "If UCC [user created content] is to have influence, it must hold certain
values."

ps. Just remembered the takeout idea from Mr. Winston's speech. He said that if political parties want a strong message, the best way to sell it is not by crafting a tight script, but by ensuring that it's something someone would want to download to their iPod.

 

rion
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