Everyday, some 500,000 to a million comments are made by netizens in Korean cyberspace. From the homepage of Cheong Wa Dae to Internet shopping malls, few places are free from the influence of online comments, which are becoming an increasingly powerful instrument of public opinion. But according to the JoongAng Ilbo, the “Super-Comment Tribe,” composed of a relatively limited number of individuals who post a disproportionate amount of the comments, are driving Korea’s online comment culture, with some criticizing that the tribe is distorting the formation of online opinion. With the cooperation of portal site Naver, the JoongAng took a look at the “Super-Comment Tribe” and their influence on netizen opinion, analyzing the comments made on Naver.com’s news portal from Dec. 20 to 30.
During that period, 41,944,832 people visited Naver News. Of these, 350,545, or 0.84 percent, left at least one comment. This means that less than one person in a 100 who read a piece of news leaves a comment. And of those that left comments, the 11,878 members of the “Super-Comment Tribe,” who write on average over 70 comments a month, left 2,212,813 of the 4,373,306 comments that were left during the 10-day period. In other words, they were responsible for 50.6 percent of the total comments from the survey period. The Super-Comment Tribe might make up only 3.4 percent of commenters, but they form the “hub” that manufactures Internet opinion. Yonsei University psychology professor Hwang Sn-min said, “That comments are driven by a minority of netizens means it’s hard to consider them representative of Internet opinion.”
Some 76.7 percent of the commenters were men. Prof. Hwang said, “Because men, who strongly tend to be aggressive, are posting comments in an concentrated manner, there are many cases in which the comments are one-sided and combative.
By age, people under 30 (who, as an age group, have a high rate of Internet usage) accounted for 61.1 percent of the comments posted (2,671,749). By news category, society news attracted the highest percent of comments over a year period with 25 percent, followed by entertainment (20 percent), politics (15 percent) and sports (12 percent). This was due to Korea’s Internet culture, which is particularly sensitive to social issues. When limited to just the 10-day course of the survey, science news came out on top with 29.4 percent, but this was thanks to the Hwang Woo-suk scandal.
Even within the “Super-Comment Tribe,” however, there was a hard-core elite of 137 netizens who posted over 1,000 comments per month, the “Ultra-Comment Tribe.” Over the survey period, they posted some 218,203 comments, or about 5 percent of the total. There was even one apparently diligent netizen who posted over 7,000 comments over a month period. Kyung Hee Cyber University professor Min Gyeong-bae of the NGO department said, “Cyberspace is growing muddy because a minority of netizens are meaninglessly flooding it with comments.”
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23 Comments
This is hardly surprising. I’d be interested in seeing the number of lurkers vs posters who visit The Blog Formerly Known as Marmot’s Hole.
I have no comment about this.
I’ve been saying this all along.
Here’s your “Super Comment Tribe” right here
Kushibo _is_ the Super Comment Tribe
He is truly a Netizen’s Netizen.
You know what, I think I really should reduce my commenting. There’s a lot of downtime where I work, and in those times I would comment a lot, but then I would find it too irresistible to tone down my posting volume even when I’m busy. I really need to break this cycle now, and frankly, Random Guy’s comment, along with this post, is a wake-up call. I’ll try to limit myself to no more than one comment per post. Thanks, Random Guy. I learned a real lesson today.
Oh pshah, I like hearing what you have to say. It was a compliment not an insult. :\
So you’re commenting on Random Guy’s comment that you comment a lot. I’d say that speaks for itself, but I still couldn’t resist commenting about it. I look forward to any comments you might have.
michael is trying to usurp your title as Super-commenter-oh-high. Quick, comment kushibo!
mmmmm…..
How meta, you sound like Dave Winer.
Leaving aside the referent of that problematic “some”, exactly does it mean - if it’s more than a tautology - that the super-comment tribe is “driving Korea’s online comment culture”? If they in fact constitute such a small percentage of “netizens”, then they obviously aren’t driving anything other than their own hobby horses.
This is nothing more than the knuckleheads in the newsroom and the punerati waking up to the fact that you can’t really reliably draw much in the way of conclusions regarding the netizens’, let alone the general public’s, state of mind, from perusing internet comment pages.
Which means it’s meaningless to assert that the SCT is “distorting” the formation of online opinion. That would be the same smug stoneheads in the conventional media who, moreover, should be looking in the mirror when they talk about distorting public opinion.
Lazy journalists will continue to use the nutizens’ opinions as long as it suits their agenda, which in Korea seems to occur with suspicious regularity.
Lemming-like behavior? On the Internet? Involving Koreans? My world is shattered!
super-comment tribe is a dead meat.
I have a modest proposal for a surefire way to cut the comment tribe down to size: A daily Shelton Bumgartner post on every known blog in Korea.
Cyber high-fives to slim and JJ
I predict a future death. It will be in a PC-Bang, but it will not the death of a gamer. It will be the super-ultra-mega-commenter mentioned in the article who had ~7,000 comments in a month–over 225 a day.
If we start discussing The Simpsons on this blog,
kushibo will surely comment more than once…
he may resist, but he’ll lose
Hey, did anybody else here see that “Real Actors
Simpsons Intro Video”? It was fairly well-done…
http://www.waytoblue.com/media.....s_850k.asx
enjoy.
Michael: “Lazy journalists will continue to use the nutizens’ opinions as long as it suits their agenda, which in Korea seems to occur with suspicious regularity.”
One of the great quotes.
Mac users will appreciate visit to this site.
‘one digital life’ is reaaly nice - enjoy!