With some of the highest rates of broadband and wireless Internet penetration in the world, Korea and Japan are home to thriving online communities that affect politics, shape public opinion, and forge new forms of social bonding. In Korea, the net has empowered citizen journalism and created a new national pastime of “massively multiplayer online games.” According to the Washington Post, more blogs are written in Japanese than in English, despite the fact that English speakers outnumber Japanese speakers by five to one. Both countries are bastions of participatory Internet use, but what accounts for subtle differences in user attitudes and behavior? In addition to exploring the challenges and lessons learned by people blogging about Korean and Japanese society and politics, the panel discusses how the peculiarities of Japanese and Korean political and online cultures affect participatory democracy in those countries, and whether these experiences will be a bellwether for the global community.

This program takes place in conjunction with the ongoing, two-year, Ethical Blogger project conducted by Brown University’s Watson Institute, the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, Demos, NYU’s Center for Global Affairs, and Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Introductory remarks by Devin T. Stewart, Director, Editor, Global Policy Innovations program, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

Thursday, April 10, 2008

with

David Weinberger
Author, Fellow, Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society

Wendy H.K. Chun
Associate Professor of Modern Culture and Media, Brown University

Tobias Harris
Publisher, ObservingJapan.com; freelance blogger and journalist

Stuart Thorson
Professor of Political Science, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University

Samuel Jamier
Senior Program Officer, Contemporary Issues & Corporate Affairs, The Korea Society

Moderated by

Daniel B. Levine
The Korea Society

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