TY - JOUR
T1 - Digital Feminism and Affective Splintering
T2 - South Korean Twitter Discourse on 500 Yemeni Refugees
AU - Kim, Do Own (Donna)
AU - Curran, Nathaniel Ming
AU - Kim, Hyun Tae (Calvin)
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 (Do Own (Donna) Kim, Nathaniel Ming Curran, and Hyun Tae (Calvin) Kim). Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd). All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - This article examines Korean Twitter discourse surrounding Yemeni refugees in South Korea. Sequestered on Jeju Island since their arrival in 2018, the 500 refugees have prompted enormous public debate in Korea, which has until recently defined itself in terms of a mono-ethnic identity. Grounded in the literature on Korean digital feminism, this article conducts a thematic analysis from a corpus of more than 8,000 Korean-language tweets. The refugees and their situation are found to be appropriated by different segments of South Korean society to make broader arguments about gender, nationalism, and economic insecurity. This article finds that prorefugee and antirefugee arguments draw on identical themes to draw opposite conclusions predicated on their different understandings of “Koreanness” in increasingly multicultural South Korea. The article suggests the notion of “affective splintering” to make sense of the lack of cohesion among individuals within superficially ideologically aligned groups, such as conservatives or digital feminists. Similarities and differences with Twitter discourse on refugees from other contexts are discussed.
AB - This article examines Korean Twitter discourse surrounding Yemeni refugees in South Korea. Sequestered on Jeju Island since their arrival in 2018, the 500 refugees have prompted enormous public debate in Korea, which has until recently defined itself in terms of a mono-ethnic identity. Grounded in the literature on Korean digital feminism, this article conducts a thematic analysis from a corpus of more than 8,000 Korean-language tweets. The refugees and their situation are found to be appropriated by different segments of South Korean society to make broader arguments about gender, nationalism, and economic insecurity. This article finds that prorefugee and antirefugee arguments draw on identical themes to draw opposite conclusions predicated on their different understandings of “Koreanness” in increasingly multicultural South Korea. The article suggests the notion of “affective splintering” to make sense of the lack of cohesion among individuals within superficially ideologically aligned groups, such as conservatives or digital feminists. Similarities and differences with Twitter discourse on refugees from other contexts are discussed.
KW - digital feminism
KW - refugees
KW - South Korea
KW - Twitter
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85097872648&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85097872648
SN - 1932-8036
VL - 14
SP - 4117
EP - 4135
JO - International Journal of Communication
JF - International Journal of Communication
ER -