Proceedings of the 16th International Academic Conference, Amsterdam

THE GENERATION VOTE AND INFLUENTIAL MEDIA POWER IN REPUBLIC OF KOREA

JEONGEUN AHN

Abstract:

The ‘generation’ has had a great effect on general elections since 2002 in South Korea. It is important to generate ‘the generation vote’. The generation has made a ‘generation cleavage’ organize axis that consist of the left of axis called the young and progressive ‘2030(both 20s and 30s)’ and the right of axis called the old and conservative ‘5060(50s and 60s)’. In the meantime, the study of generation vote emphasized that one generation experienced a similar to political experience became one cohort group, having an identical voting behavior in election. After 2002, however, the newly rising 20s has brought generation cleavage to change a new cleavage paradigm since a presidential election in 2007. They have taken a stance midway between conservative and the progressive since 2007. They have gone as far as to turn conservative since 2012. The change of the 20’s generation vote is caused by ‘media literacy’. Media literacy is a competence of communication that enables people to analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a wide of variety media modes. The new rising 20s voters who have higher media literacy than other generations are able to approach a several of political information from a new viewpoint. Therefore, although the new rising 20s voter have different characteristics from other generations, they have shared their political tendency with other generations due to their higher degree of media literacy. In short, this paper would be centrally analyzed the change of the new rising 20s voters who have influence over changing the generation cleavage. Due to the media literacy, the differentiation of an intra-generational cohort such as the voting behavior of the 20s voters makes a new voter group that forms an alliance with other generations. So, It doesn't make the existing political generation cleavages such as 2030 vs. 5060, but the newly political generation cleavages such as 2030 vs. 2050.

Keywords: generation vote, political voting behavior, media power

DOI: 10.20472/IAC.2015.016.003

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