Bloomsbury Digital Media, Online Activism, and Social Movements in Korea (Korean Communities across the World)

This book deepens scholarly understandings of how digital technologies reconfigure civic engagement by examining the distinctive trajectories of online activism in the Korean context. Drawing on a diverse set of case studies—including SNS-driven political participation, the 2008 U.S. beef protests, the 2016–2017 candlelight vigils, and the #MeToo movement—the volume situates these movements within the dynamic interplay of evolving media infrastructures and Korea’s social, cultural, and political conditions. The contributors explore how activists, citizens, and organizations strategically deploy digital platforms to mobilize publics, disseminate information, and contest institutional authority. By tracing both continuities and shifts across multiple moments of protest, the contributors demonstrate how technological affordances intersect with locally specific contexts to generate emergent forms of collective action and political expression. Rather than framing digital media as inherently emancipatory, the volume critically engages the constraints, ambivalences, and unintended effects that accompany networked mobilization. Taken together, these analyses provide a nuanced account of how digital media not only enables protest but also redefines the contours of participation, community, and agency in contemporary Korean society.