the structural relationship between politicians' web visibility and political finance
TRANSCRIPT
WEBOMETRICSINSTITUTE
The Structural Relationship be-tween Politicians' Web Visibility
and Political FinanceA Case Study on South Korea's National As-
sembly Members
Yon Soo Lim, Ting Wang, & Han Woo Park WCU Webometrics Institutute
Yeungnam UniversityE-mail: [email protected]
Introduction The development of Internet communication
technology facilitates mediatization of politics. Network society describes the aspects of
modern society as an interrelated social struc-ture that is derived from the mediatized com-munication relationships specifically via the Internet.
Introduction Although current political communication stud-
ies examine the social influence of the Inter-net on politics, majority ignores structural (networked) properties.
This study examines the structural relation-ships between online and offline political power on the basis of network characteristics.
Political Finance The power of money
Traditionally, the level of political finance has been regarded as a crucial indicator of politi-cal power. Public support Political activities (i.e. campaigning) resource
Although the relationship between political fi-nance and election is ambiguous, the money power is still considered an indicator of offline political power.
Web Visibility Web visibility as an indicator of online political power
Presence or appearance of actors or issues being dis-cussed by the public (Internet users) on the web.
Tracking web visibility is powerful way to get an insight into public reactions to actors or issues.
Recent studies indicates the positive relationships between politicians’ web visibility level and election.
Also, the co-occurrence web visibility between two politicians represents their hidden online political re-lationships based on the public perception.
Political role of the Internet Normalization perspective:
Internet may reflect the traditional power structure among individual politicians.
Equalization (Innovation) perspective: Internet may reform the offline hierarchical
structure of individual politicians.
Research Objective The purpose of this study is to investigate the
structural relationship between the co-occur-rence web visibility network of Korean Na-tional Assembly Members and the dyadic dif-ference network of their political finance re-ceived from the public.
It will provide a comparison between online and offline political structures in South Korea as well as a theoretical argument on the polit-ical role of Internet.
Method Data
Subject: 18th Korean National Assembly members elected in April
2008. 278 members were examined (January 26, 2010).
Data 2008 Political Finance data from Korean National Election
Commission (http://www.nec.go.kr) Demographic attributes: gender & age Political attributes: consecutive incumbent, constituency,
committee, & party affiliation Gathered from National Assembly’s official site (http://
www.assembly.go.kr) and the politicians’ homepages.
Method Data gathering for web visibility (co-occur-
rence) A popular Korean-language based search engines
Naver.com & Daum.net API-based programs by WWI Search query:
Politician A’s name AND B’s name AND “ 의원 (National Assembly member)”
Collected across different web platforms including blog, image, news, and website.
Search date: Jan. 30, 2010
Analysis Correlation analysis (Pearson & Spearman)
Identify the relationships among political finance, web centrality, (eigenvector) and vote
Quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) corre-lation Identify the structural relationships between politi-
cal finance and web co-occurrence Additionally, other dyadic difference networks
based on politicians’ attributes (gender, age, con-secutive incumbent, party affiliation, constituency, and committee) were considered
Results – Pearson & Spearman Cor-relationPearson Correlation
Spearman Correlation
Note. * p<.05, ** p<.01
1 (N=278) 2 (N=278) 3 (N=234)
1 Finance 1 0.420** 0.101
2 Web 1 0.184**
3 Vote 1
1 (N=278) 2 (N=278) 3 (N=234)
1 Finance 1 0.513** 0.090
2 Web 1 0.163*
3 Vote 1
Results – Path Analysis
PoliticalFinance
WebVisibility
Vote.42** .18**
.18 .03
Political finance’s indirect effect = .076
Note. ** p<.01
Results – QAP Correlation
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1 Committee 1 0.004 -0.016 0.025 -0.021 -0.074** 0.045** -0.037**
2 Constituency 1 0.097** -0.007 -0.043** -0.064** 0.105** -0.119**
3 Party 1 0.027 -0.045* -0.050* 0.242** -0.094**
4 Gender 1 0.024 0.031 0.041 -0.224**
5 Age 1 0.179** -0.051* 0.049*
6 Incumbent 1 -0.060** 0.098**
7 Web 1 -0.158**
8 Finance 1
Note. * p<.05, ** p<.01
Findings Pearson & Spearman correlation:
A positive direction, indicating that politicians with a central position of the web visibility network re-ceive more financial donation than those with a peripheral position.
Online power is significantly related to the number of votes, but offline power is not.
However, the indirect impact of political finance on election can be assumed.
Findings QAP correlation
A significant relationship between web visibility and political finance networks.
The more the web visibility between politicians, the less the gap of their financial amount.
Web visibility and political finance networks are significantly related to most socio-political at-tribute networks (except gender network).
Discussion This study systematically examined the structural
relationships between online (web visibility) and offline (political finance) political power networks.
The results reveals that online and offline power structures are significantly correlated to each other.
This study supports the normalization argument that the Internet is a replication of the real world rather than the equalization perspective that the Internet will reform the offline hierarchical struc-ture of individual politicians.
Limitations and Future Studies Future studies should consider more compre-
hensive networks (e.g. public donation net-work, online supporters network, etc.).
Future studies should employ a longitudinal approach considering the network changes over time.
Future studies should consider a mixed ap-proach between qualitative and quantitative on the web visibility measure.
