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The active audience in a panic:
a case study of the interaction between media discourse and public opinion prior to labor law revision in december 1996, Korea
by
Nam-Doo Kim (Doctoral Student)
University of Texas at Austin
The Department of Journalism
Mailing Address: 918, E. 40th ST. #116, Austin, TX 78751
Phone Number: (512) 459-4634
Email address: [log in to unmask]
- Abstract -
This paper examines the interaction between mainstream media discourse and public opinion before labor law revision in 1996, Korea, and evaluates the nature of the public through the redefinition of "active audience." While the media coverage of labor issue and background issue was unbalanced toward pro-employer side, there were some indicators that the public responded sensitively to the marginalized oppositional theme in the media discourse. The activeness in the general audience was motivated by the mass fear.
The active audience in a panic:
a case study of the interaction between media discourse and public opinion prior to labor law revision in december 1996, Korea
A paper submitted to
the Cultural and Critical Studies Division in the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
by
Nam-Doo Kim (Doctoral Student)
Mailing Address: 918, E. 40th ST. #116, Austin, TX 78751
Phone Number: (512) 459-4634
Email address: [log in to unmask]
Note: Some descriptions about Korean situation in this paper need relevant citations from Korean literature, although they are sort of "common sense" to Korean people. This work will be done when I stay in Korea this summer.
The active audience in a panic
The active audience in a panic: A case study of the interaction between media discourse and public opinion prior to labor law revision in December 1996, Korea
The history of mass communication theory is in many respects a duel between competing assumptions, that of "the powerful media" opposing "the active (or obstinate, or resistant) audience." Empirically though, actual media do not usually seem so powerful, nor the active audience so active. What may be needed is a conceptual balancing point between the two.
If we are to examine the influence of media coverage upon the audience, we typically begin with a question of how much the media affect (or affected) the audience. But I here raise an opposite question; how much was the audience active in the relation to the media in a given case?
This seemingly odd question, I think, can be justified when a series of considerations unique to Korean society is attached. First, Korean society is a highly centralized one such that a lot of people are exposed simultaneously to the mainstream mass media. More than 10 million residents, nearly 1/4 of the entire population, are concentrated in the national capitol city, Seoul. The proportion rises to 1/3 when the metropolitan area is counted. In this high-density environment, the general public is likely to be bombarded by centralized media-generated knowledge, directly or indirectly.
Second, a handful of national daily newspapers based in Seoul play an essential role of distributing political information across the whole nation. The Korean newspaper market shows a high imbalance of "strong central paper, weak local paper." More importantly, Korean newspapers still keep to the die-hard tradition of "opinion paper." In contrast, Korean broadcast news journalism, having long been in the direct or indirect control of the Korean government, usually does not dare to challenge seriously official views held by the government. As a result, the major newspaper organizations have their self-image of powerful opinion leadership in driving public opinion, and many observers, even though they see it as undesirable, tend to admit their potency.
The last point is that the mainstream newspapers, highly conservative ones, have been regarded by many critics as driving the public the wrong way, especially during the phases of political conflict between radical dissident groups and Korean power blocs. The major newspapers, sometimes called "the regime press" by antagonists, have been successful in promoting the public anxiety hostile to the radical groups several times.
"The interruption by the press in 1987" is a dramatic example. Shortly after the "June Struggle," when popular protest pushed the then Korean military-supported government into promising a direct-vote presidential election in the year, a nationwide strike among workers lasted from July through September. Then the conservative newspapers condemned strikers as rascals threatening the national security. They largely destroyed the solidarity between middle-class citizens and radical groups, and finally contributed to the victory of a candidate nominated by the ruling party. In the aftermath, radical movement groups, including workers, students, and dissidents, have been steadily labeled as deviant groups by the mainstream media.
Given this background, the nationwide protest against labor law revision from late 1996 to early 1997 deserves special treatment. Apparently, the conservative newspapers at the time favored the revised labor law and disapproved of the general strike led by a radical worker organization, Min-ju-no-chong, or Korea Council of Trade Unions (KCTU). The illegal strike, however, thanks to the endorsement of the pubic opinion, successfully nullified the revised law without the detention of KCTU's leading members. At first glance, this historical fact gives an image that public opinion formed itself against the mainstream media that were hostile to radical workers. Then, can we conclude that in this case there existed a "genuine active audience" within a media-saturated society? It is a plausible, but at the same time hasty guess.
This study has two purposes; one is to make an inference about the formation of public opinion vis-…-vis the mainstream media discourse before the labor law revision. Another is to evaluate the nature of public opinion at that time in terms of the notion of the active audience. Before doing so, a few theoretical concerns should be addressed. What do we exactly mean by an "active audience"? How can we identify the influence of media upon such an "active" public opinion formation? What historical and situational factors should be counted for final evaluation?
The meanings of active audience
The concept of "active audience" or "audience activity" issued from the subversion of the notion of powerful media shared by the early mass communication theories later named as bullet theory. It is said that the Klapper's classical book The Effects of Mass Communication (1960) replaced the na‹ve model of strong and universal effects with the limited-effects model. The shift from sender-oriented research to audience-oriented one was signaled by Katz (1959), who suggested a changed question from "what do media do to people" to "what do people do with the media?" Soon there appeared a circle of researchers known as uses and gratifications approach following that way. For uses and gratifications theorists, the concept of the audience activity "constitutes one of the essential underpinnings of the approach" (Palmgreen, 1984). According to McQuail, although controversies over the passivity or activity of the audience have abounded during the history of mass communication theory, "the balance seems now to lie with the active audience side of the argument" (1994, p.315).
Nevertheless, the essential term "activity" seems to be an elusive concept. Perhaps because of its "extraordinary range of meanings" (Blumer, 1979, p.13), even a uses and gratifications theorist admits that "the concept of activity is not easily defined" (Rubin, 1986, p.293). Biocca (1988) offers a list of sub-terms seen in their literature: selectivity, utilitarianism, intentionality, resistance to influence, and involvement. However, his main concern lies in rejection of the metaconstruct of the active audience, because "it is by definition nearly impossible for the audience not to be active" (p.59). The extremely broad coverage of the multifaceted term makes the concept virtually unfalsifiable. Furthermore, Biocca argues that the ideal-type independent audience argued by its initial advocates had been linked with the mixed ideology of classical liberal democracy and consumerism. This has two implications: First, the notion of "active audience" was first coined not so much a neutral term as a value-laden term. Next, even the initial conception of activism is susceptible to a argument that it is not a "genuine" one.
Aside from the limited effects model and uses and gratifications traditions, the notion of active audiences can be found in another paradigm, roughly named cultural studies. Because of its philosophical traditions such as Marxism, semiotics, and (post-) structuralism that avoided "humanistic" terms, many literatures in cultural studies do not tend to use directly the term of active audience. However, since cultural studies theorists have moved their concerns from the "deterministic" meaning productions guaranteed by in-subject-ideology toward the "polysemic" nature of popular texts that allows people's "aberrant reading" other than "preferred meaning," (Eco, 1965) it has now become easy to find similar notions from their literature.
For instance, Fiske (1987) advocates vehemently "the semiotic power" of the audience equipped with popular cultural capitals. According to him, although the production of cultural commodities is monopolized to the economic powers of capitalism, the production of meanings and pleasures is in control of audiences who play with texts for powerful, pleasurable, and resistant readings. One trouble with his argument is that he seems to posit a simplistic dichotomy in which a variety of meanings irreducible to explicit legitimation of the status quo are identified with "resistant" reading practices. Ironically, his view sometimes resembles a variation of consumer sovereignism when he says "the production of meaning/pleasures is finally the responsibility of the consumer and is undertaken only his/her interests" (p.313). Here his ideal-typed audience of cultural guerilla approximates once again the "unfalsifiable" status.
Given the considerations above, should we abandon the concept of active audience, following Biocca's recommendations? A fundamental dilemma here is that, even though we find he is largely correct, we still need the "unsatisfying" notion to deal with practical matters in our lives. We depend on such notion as "activeness" to understand and judge the nature of a specific audience involved in mass communication. Even though the unfalsifiable term is likely to be void as a scientific language, it seems still meaningful as a human term, because we need its evaluative connotations in our practices. If it is the case, it is required to accept two characteristics inherent in the conceptual status of the term. One is that someone's specific decision whether or not an audience is active is probably subject to challenges. The other is that the semantic differentiation of the broad term can allow us to go beyond the simple dichotomy of active/passive audience. In light of this, I suggest five sub-terms by which we can translate a report on an audience into assessment of active audience.
The performative audience. This term refers to an audience member who is just "doing something" in a technical sense. He or she is doing something named "selection," "use," "involvement," "interpretation," "decoding," "meaning production," or, in a word, doing "reception." Strictly speaking, the performative audience is not opposed to the passive audience, because "activity" in this sense is virtually unfalsifiable term, as Biocca noted it. This technical term therefore has little to say about the assessment of active audience.
The unyielding audience. This criterion draws on the traditional limited effects model paradigm. Here audience activity is described in a negative term: a failure in the achievement of an assumed communication goal, no matter good or bad. This definition gives us an image of the audience as a barricade, recalling the Bauer (1964)'s famous phrases of "imperviousness to influence" and "the obstinate audience."
The pursuing audience. This term shares its concern with uses and gratifications paradigm. However, this guideline has a more limited coverage than the approach, because it is inevitable to limit "the extraordinary range of its meanings." The qualification is that an audience should pursue its needs that we can reasonably assume as already given prior to encountering a media. In the strict sense, the pursuing individual is likened to an organism under the dictate of its own need, which can refer to a psychological one as well as a culturally learned one notwithstanding.
The insightful audience. This term concerns a much more evaluative and subjective judgment. Theoretical implications for this guideline are found in the underlying assumptions of rational self-possession in the uses and gratifications paradigm, or in the beliefs in the chances of "oppositional reading" (Hall, 1980) in reception analysis. To meet this requirement, an audience can be seen as having its own insight to discern things between good and bad, to penetrate into hidden meanings, or to subvert the dominant ideology, with all of these seen as "purpose-rational" behaviors or "resistant" practices consistent with a researcher's ideological commitment. The insightful audience equipped with innate faculty or cultural resources looks like a clairvoyant who can see something through the heavy fog.
The empowered audience. This final one is also highly controversial and hard to meet. The empowered audience refers to those who can be assumed to exercise a certain form of "power," "influence," or "pressure" upon the media side. In spite of his celebration of "semiotic power" other than "social power" of audiences, Fiske (1987) indeed alludes to the audience's implicit pressure upon media industries by saying, "texts that are popular amongst a wide variety of audiences must hold this balance between the dominant ideology and its multiple oppositions on a point of extreme precariousness." (p.321) For true or not, the belief in the empowered audience can be also detected in the tenets of marketplace model of audience as consumer, stressing that the media serves the audience's preferences (for details of this model, see Webster & Phalen, 1994).
The above dimensions except the first one constitute, if all met, an active audience in full sense. If any of those fails to be met, there exists an active audience only in partial sense. The partially active audience is subject to any counterargument pointing out missing component(s). If an audience was not unyielding, then someone could argue that the audience was not active because the media affected the audience; if an audience did not pursue something to meet an already given need, someone could contend that the audience was actually passive, just letting things go; if an audience did not seem insightful, someone could argue that the audience was indeed captivated by unintended media effects or by ideological effects; if an audience did not look empowered, someone could regard the audience as still powerless under the dominant media institution.
In reality, it is far from easy to find an audience member in full sense. Therefore, when we encounter a researcher arguing a given audience was active, these semantic differentials will be useful to judge in what sense the audience was active and inactive.
Foreground- and background-level media agenda
The renewal of effect research rejecting the minimal effects model was marked by a shift of attention toward long-term cognitive and social impacts and rather than short-term attitudinal effects (McQuail, 1994). In the new currents of a "cognitive turn" (Blumer & Gurevitch, 1996) since 1970s, of special interest here are agenda-setting research and social constructivist approach, because both helped not only shed a light on the cognitive dimension of media influence but also lead communication scholars back to the study of public opinion formation.
It is well known that the concept of agenda-setting begins with Lippman's idea of how media contribute to the shaping of the pictures in our heads. McCombs & Shaw's seminal work (1972) signaled a boom of agenda-setting research, which was illustrated by Rogers & Dearing (1988). One explanation for its popularity is the notion of agenda-setting appealed to the second generation of journalism-rooted researchers since 1960s, who were interested in media effects on the cognitive level rather than on the attitude level (Chaffee & Hochheimer, 1985). The agenda-setting concept was both an appealing metaphor and an empirical concept allowing means of measurement (Kosicki, 1993).
Nevertheless, much of agenda-setting research has been criticized in many ways. One of most frequent doubts are concerned with its hazy causal direction from media to the audience (McQuail, 1997, p.356; Kosicki, 1993; Rogers et. al., 1993; Reese, 1991). As Rogers & Dearing (1988) point out, it is possible for media agenda, public agenda, and policy agenda interact in complex ways and in different directions. In particular, Erbring et. al. (1980) observed that media effects are contingent on issue-specific audience characteristics. They introduced an "audience-effects model," which treats issue-specific audience sensitivities as modulators, and media coverage as trigger stimulus, issue by issue. Iyengar & Kinder's experimental studies (1985) also supported that the strength of media agenda-setting was conditioned by personal experiences.
Another major flaw of traditional agenda-setting studies is the treatment of a public issue as "a rather broad, abstract, content-free domain devoid of controversy or contending forces" (Kosicki, 1993, p.104). Kosicki recommends a perspective of "meaningful agenda-setting" (Gurevitch & Blumer, 1990), drawing on frame/framing approach. Recent agenda-setting theory goes the way of differentiating between first-level agenda (agenda of objects) and second-level agenda (agenda of attributes) (McCombs, 1992; McCombs & Evatt, 1995). Despite the idiosyncratic terminology, the authors share much of the theoretical resources with the framing perspective. This evolution implies the shift of attention from the amount given by media covering an issue toward the way the media construct an issue.
Much of attribute-agenda setting studies seem to follow a "narrowing down" strategy. In other words, attribute-agenda setting is assumed to trickle down in our heads from general issue-domain to specific sub-issue content, as the term "first-level" and "second-level" suggest. Since Benton & Frazier (1976)'s distinction between the levels of general issue name, sub-issue, and specific information, such a schematic hierarchy has been the usual way. However, it should be noted that alternative strategy of "broadening out" is not without possibility. For instance, Miller et. al. (1990) distinguished "background agenda" from "election agenda" to examine the subtle bias of British media coverage of 1987 election campaign. Background agenda was defined as the pattern of issues covered by news media in the rest of election news stories. Even though overt election news coverage operates under balancing norms, the background news provides voters with the immediate context from which a candidate can solely benefit. Also of interest is the idea that the degree of unbalanced media coverage differs between "foreground level" and "background level," which are defined in the context of a political process in highlight.
Focusing on interactions between the media and the public rather than issue salience or direct causality, this study adopts the "social constructivist approach," which Gamson & Modigliani (1989) named themselves. Their standing is the view of the media as having social impacts by constructing meanings and offering these constructs in systematic ways to audiences, although not taking forms of one-way direction but of the interaction between the two sides. Then, what can be said about the political implications of media discourse vis-…-vis audiences? Divergent answers seem to originate from two different assumptions, which Johnston & Klandermans (1995) distinguish between the "systemic" and "performative" views of culture.
Several researchers, who largely employed frame/framing concept as a unit of analysis, understand the influence of media discourse in terms of social control. As Giltin (1980) showed how the U.S. media coverage of New Left contributed to the legitimation of the status quo, critical media critics converge on the idea that media maintain and fortify the dominant definition of reality through media frames (e.g. Cohen & Young, 1973; Hallin, 1986; Entman, 1991). In contrast, other scholars have seen the media discourse as "a site on which various social groups, institutions, and ideologies struggle over the definition and construction of social reality" (Gurevitch & Levy, 1985, p.19).
Gamson (1992,1995) argues that, although media practices tend to promote social movement discourse only rarely and unevenly, people have their potentials of integrating media discourse with other cultural resources to construct social protest. For instance, the personalized "moral play" frame in media discourse can stir up people's indignation aimed at specific human actors, although the target may well be an easy and inappropriate surrogate for some broader structural constraints (Gamson, 1995, p.93). All in all, the discussions above indicate the ambivalent nature of media discourse, which is internally hierarchical but open to divergent interpretations by readers.
Historical and situational considerations
On April 26, 1996, then President Kim Young-sam declared a "new labor-management partnership" and ordered the establishment of a presidential commission for labor reform in charge of drafting new labor laws. The 30-member labor reform commission was launched on May 9, including five representatives each from labor and management. Despite half-year long heated debates, however, the presidential commission failed to reach agreement. Key issues concerned laying off workers through merger or shutdown of companies, introducing flexible work hours, allowing multiple unions at a single workplace, permitting unions to engage in political activities, lifting the ban on the intervention by third parties in labor disputes, etc. In December, the ruling party called a special session of the National Assembly despite the opposition parties' die-hard resistance, and unilaterally passed a pro-employer bill without notifying opposition parties. The act included the legalization of lay-offs and flexible work hours as well as the permission of multiple unions after a three-year grace period.
A nationwide general strike followed immediately, led by the then unauthorized workers' organization, the Korea Council of Trade Unions (KCTU) and jointly by the solely authorized and relatively conservative organization, the Korea Federation of Trade Unions (KFTU). Soon it became clear that the public was highly concerned about the lay-off introduction and against the government. Confronting hostile workers, opposition parties, intellectuals, and the general public as well as international opinion, president Kim Young-sam was forced to announce the re-revision of the labor law in late January 1997. Finally, on March 10, 1997, lawmakers passed a new bill including allowing multiple unions immediately and delaying lay-off for two years.
At first glance, it seems natural to ascribe the explosive public resentment to Nalchigi, a Korean term for a majority party's blatant action of passing bills by overriding opposition parties' resistance. Apparently, the shocking event that the ruling party went so far to pass the bill in the absence of opposition parties in the National Assembly "pulled a trigger." Strictly speaking, however, it should be noted that the Nalichigi, although decisive, was an amplifier of, rather than the origin of, people's grievances; there already existed widespread anxieties highly sensitive to the labor law issue. I am not against the interpretation that the ruling group's misconduct amplified the public resentment at them. What I am interested in is the cultural origin of the people's mood - how their grievances culminated unusually highly before the rewriting of the labor law?
Perhaps the inflammable nature of the labor law issue itself can be named in the first place. Discussing rules over labor-management relationship likely accompanies structural conflicts inherent in a capitalist society. However, according to social movement theorist Klandermans (1988), structural factors are alone insufficient to give a full explanation for the rise of social movement. It is not rare case in which grievances remain trapped in silence without political culmination. He therefore stresses the dimension of "meaning" that people attach to their situation. Similarly, this study concerns the process of social construction of meaning during the interaction of media discourse and public discourse.
Contextual and situational considerations should be given before analysis. First of all, the Korean public has been familiar to "the corporate-welfare system" rather than "the state-welfare system." Song Ho-geun (1994) concludes that the Korean welfare system has depended on market and family, with the limited state intervention occurring only when the above institutions fail. Lee In-jae (1997) characterizes the change in Korean welfare after 1987's huge labor dispute as increased corporate-welfare and still-nominal welfare legalization. For instance, the total welfare cost per worker covered by a corporation increased 3.5 times during 1989 to 1994, whereas level of expenditure by central government into social welfare remained the lowest among the countries with similar average income. In particular, the crux of Korea-specific welfare system was life-employment and practices of retirement pay. Accordingly, the immediate introduction of westernized lay-off practices could shock many workers and their families.
Second, the period of controversies concerning the new labor policy overlapped the stage of sluggish Korean economy. Snowballing trade deficit rose up to over 20 billion dollars in 1996, with domestic recession deepening. Business sectors suffered serious economic inactivity and, since the mid of the year, led to mushrooms of forced retirement of employees called "early retirement" or "honored retirement." Accordingly, the recession-related phenomena offered the public an immediate context for interpretations of the labor reform issue.
Third, both employer's and employee's groups had a chance to wage "symbolic struggles" to gain a vantage point till the final policymaking. This situation was partly created by the on-going debates in the labor reform commission, in which management and labor representatives (including KCTU members) participated. I do not mean by this that the general audience had been given the balanced and full information thanks to the mass media. Rather, this situation allows an investigation into the media coverage at two levels; in the foreground-level agenda of labor issue, how balancing was the mainstream media coverage of the two sides? And in the background-level agenda of recession, how was the media frame linked to cultural themes familiar to Korean audience?
Here the term frame follows the explication given by Entman (1993). According to him, a frame is made through selection and salience, "in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described" (p.52). The term theme was drawn from Gamson (1992)'s usage. He used the term to indicate the cultural narration in the broader political culture. Some frames are more potent when they resonate with certain cultural themes. At the same time he emphasizes the dialectic nature of themes; "there is no theme without a countertheme" (p.135). Counterthemes typically share many of the same take-it-for-granted assumptions but challenge some aspect of the mainstream culture.
The easiest way of identifying the cultural themes at work before the revision is to take a look at the discourse strategies employed by both employer groups and employee groups. On September 7 1996, for instance, the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) announced the next year's plan of wage-freeze, and on the following day an affiliated research institute released a report about the expected ill effects of multiple unions and the burdens of labor cost recently increased. On the same day, KCTU made a statement blaming business leaders for shifting the burdens of recession wholly onto workers without admitting any accountability.
Roughly speaking, the management camp at the early stage put emphasis on keeping the long-established "three bans" on multiple unions, unions' political activities, and intervention by third parties in labor disputes. However, their focus later shifted toward the diagnosis of economic ill due to "high wages, low labor productivity, and rigid labor market," as well as the prescriptions of "wage-freeze, flexible work hours, and easy lay-offs." Their problem definition can be termed as national economy crisis. National economy crisis frame can be thought as an applied version of "development ideology" (Choi Jang-jip, 1989), which originated from a combination of totalistic utilitarianism and economic nationalism. Development ideology has been a familiar theme in Korea society with the history of economic advancement through national mobilization.
In sharp contrast, the labor circle's discourse strategy concentrated on a subsistence crisis frame as the revision came near. They attempted to shift the locus of responsibility for recession from workers to a handful of privileged families that owned conglomerates. KCTU continued to warn against the disastrous result of massive lay-offs without preparedness; it would threaten workers' lives and their households. Their argument was resonating with the appeal of basic human rights and, partly, "familism"(Banfield, 1958). Here it refers to the cultural theme by which family is regarded as the only reliable social unit within a society where competitive and exclusive organization principles prevail.
Methodology
In research, this case study took the steps of (1) doing content analysis of the foreground media coverage of labor issue, (2) doing discourse analysis of the background media coverage of recession in the context of the two oppositional frames mentioned above, (3) making inferences about public opinion formation vis-…-vis media discourse, based on poll data and other indices, and 4) finally adding an evaluation of the nature of the public opinion in terms of active audience.
For examination of media coverage, Cho-sun Daily and Chung-ang Daily were selected to represent mainstream media, because (1) they are the leading papers with the largest circulations in Korea, (2) have been perceived by the public as enjoying most powerful opinion leadership, and (3) have been main targets for criticisms by media critics because of their conservative bias. I collected news articles drawing on the Korea Integrated New Database System (KINDS) through the Internet (www.kinds.or.kr). The analysis period was April 24 to December 25, 1996. Two levels of analysis were done separately. To determine the range of foreground media coverage of labor issue, the method of keyword search was used; Korean keywords of No-dong-bup (labor law) and No-sa (labor and management) were used (unlike English, No-sa consists of just two syllables and implies both employer/employee and labor/management). Then I picked out articles relevant to the labor-related issues or events, that is, the topics of labor reform, labor policies, or labor disputes. 101 articles from Cho-sun and 139 articles from Chung-ang were selected finally.
For background media discourse analysis, I followed theses steps. At first, I divided the above searched articles into three types: opinion articles (editorials and columns), report articles (straight news stories and analyses), and feature stories (one-time features and serial features). As the result, it turned out that nearly all opinion articles were pro-employer ones, while many of report news stories were under the balancing norm between the employer and employee side, at least superficially. In contrast, features, especially daily series, had fuller forms of narrative and concentrated on vivid depictions of economic woe.
From these findings, I made a decision that the analysis of feature stories was the easiest way to capture the essentials in the background media coverage of recession, because (1) those stories showed the intention of mass media to thematize specific problems, (2) they offered more broad linkages to diverse topic domains within a framework, and (3) they were more close to "genuine" storytelling in familiar human terms. In a word, feature stories approximate "story-telling," whereas report articles were more like "chronicles" (for details of the two terms, see Bird & Dardenne, 1988).
To find indices of the public opinion, I primarily depended on relevant poll data reported in the two newspapers and additionally looked for any characteristic mark of the public mood, for example, selling records of cultural products and passing-trend words in late 1996. Although the gathered data is far short of evidencing the direct influence of the two media coverage on the general audience, it is still useful to make an inference to disclose an important aspect of the interaction between the media and the public.
The foreground media coverage of labor issue
Here I did two content analyses to examine the imbalance in media coverage of labor issues or employer/employee-related events; (1) the direction of criticism of agents (employers or employees) and (2) the direction of policy. Because there appeared stories blaming employers, but still favoring the pro-employer policy, two separate content analyses were conducted. To identify directions of criticism of agents, a category of anti-employer, anti-employee, anti-both agents/unclear, and irrelevant was constructed. The coding of policy direction was based on a category of pro-employer, pro-employee, neutral/unclear, and irrelevant. These judgments depended on the presentation of a situation (for report articles), or the writer's comment (for opinion articles). However, because it was hard to measure objectively the slant of the articles, the measure was scored conservatively. Two Korean graduate students participated as coders on April 12-14, 1999 in Korea, and the intercoder reliabilities were 0.81 and 0.79 (Scott's pi).
The result of first content analysis shows that, despite the conservative coding, the two media coverage unfavorable to employees was predominant over that unfavorable to employers (see Table 1). Still more, even the criticisms of employer side generally did not mean the sympathy with the employee issue position. According to Table 2, which presents the result of the second analysis of policy direction, virtually all of news stories in the two newspapers covering labor law or labor-related events sided with pro-employer policy. Considering low percentage in reports in Table 1 and Table 2, balancing norms in media coverage of conflicting parties were more or less at operation among fact-oriented news stories. Most of opinion articles, however, slanted to the pro-management side and feature stories also followed suit. In sum, the result of content analyses of the foreground agenda of labor issue demonstrates both the two newspapers, although the balancing norms at work, explicitly endorsed the employer's issue position.
Table The direction of criticism of agents in news stories in Cho-sun and Chung-ang
Anti-employee
Anti-employer
Anti-both /unclear
Irrelevant
Total
Cho-sun Daily
Editorials /columns
7
2
9
5
23
Reports
5
3
30
12
50
Features
9
1
14
4
28
Total
21
6
53
21
101
Chung-ang Daily
Editorials /columns
9
3
12
7
31
Reports
7
2
49
20
78
Features
8
1
13
8
30
Total
24
6
74
35
139
Table The direction of policy in news stories in Cho-sun and Chung-ang
Pro-employer
Pro-employee
Neutral /unclear
Irrelevant
Total
Cho-sun Daily
Editorials /columns
8
1
11
3
23
Reports
7
.
23
20
50
Features
12
1
10
5
28
Total
27
2
44
28
101
Chung-ang Daily
Editorials /columns
10
2
12
7
31
Reports
9
.
48
21
78
Features
13
1
10
6
30
Total
32
3
70
34
139
The background media coverage of recession
As already mentioned, the background agenda of recession was operationally defined for convenience as the daily series news stories covering recession-related phenomena and their topics were categorized into either of two conflicting themes - national economy crisis and unemployment crisis (for the translated list, see Table 3).
Most of topics in both the newspapers were those that defined the recession in the eyes of employers. Roughly from April to October 1996, the two dailies concentrated on the crisis in the business sector. Many of those stories held a shared view in pointing out that one of the main reasons of economic ill were "high wage, low efficiency," "inflexible labor market," "militant trade unions," and so on. In contrast, the topic concerned with unemployment crisis issue was treated just once and appeared later than the former topics in both the newspapers. These stories mainly depicted the sufferings of white-collar workers out of work or threatened to be so. Table 3 shows that the topic of business crisis was underpinned by other associated topics, which can be integrated in a broader scheme of national economy crisis, while the topic of unemployment remained isolated.
Table Daily series about recession in Cho-sun and Chung-ang
Topics and sub topics
Series title
Cho-sun Daily
National economy crisis
Crisis in business sector
Exodus of manufacturers (Jun. 6 times)
The scenes of depression (Aug. 6 times)
What's going on the industrial complex? (Oct. 3 times)
Management strategy
The age of recession (Sep. 4 times)
To be or not to be - going abroad (Dec. 8 times)
Examples of toughening out
You still strong in recession (Oct.- Dec. continued)
Examples in other countries
Reforms in New Zealand (Sep. 8 times)
Why is the U.S. economy strong? (Dec. 3 times)
Leaders outwitting depression (Dec. 4 times)
Unemployment crisis
Head-downed fathers (Nov.-Dec. 5 times)
Chung-ang Daily
National economy crisis
Economic diagnosis
Economy, still O.K.? (Apr. 3 times)
Crisis in business sector
Urgent diagnosis - sluggish economy (May. 3 times)
Economy, going wrong way (May- Jun. 7 times)
Management strategy
New move for renovation (Oct. 2 times)
Examples of toughening out
Competitiveness hinges on design (Jun. 3 times)
Little heroes outwitting depression
(Dec. 3 times, continued)
Examples in other countries
Learning lesson - bubble economy of Japan (Jul. 2 times)
Unemployment crisis
A typhoon of personnel cuts can be your disaster
(Sep. 5 times)
This imbalance in two oppositional story topics in the background media discourse of recession was reflected in the foreground media coverage of the labor issue. Of those stories included in the former content analyses, all feature stories except one (both 12 stories respectively for two dailies) overlapped the series stories in Table 3, with all of them categorized as national economy crisis topic. This implies that the two media coverage of labor-related issues had affinity with the frame of national economy crisis, which was dominant in the background media discourse of recession. To make this clearer, additional content analysis of foreground media coverage was conducted. News stories including any explicit remarks of serious problem definition, which can be regarded as national economy crisis or unemployment crisis, were coded. Here intercoder reliability was 0.82 (Scott's pi). According to Table 4, a considerable amount of labor-related news stories defined the serious problem in terms of a national economy crisis, while virtually none of them did in terms of an unemployment crisis.
Therefore, the media coverage of recession included dominant elements of the national economy crisis frame, which favored the issue position of employers, and the problem definition of the national economy crisis frames offered an immediate interpretative background, which often appeared directly in the foreground media agenda of labor-related issues, whereas the rare unemployment crisis frames were isolated such that pro-employee policy options were absent in the labor-related media coverage.
Table The problem definition in the labor-related media coverage
N
National economy crisis
Unemploy-ment crisis
Mixed
None
Cho-sun Daily
101
33.7 %
(34)
.
2.0 %
(2)
64.4 %
(65)
Chung-ang Daily
139
35.3 %
(49)
0.7%
(1)
2.2%
(3)
61.9%
(86)
The interaction between the media and the public
Although much of the conservative media discourse concentrated on the national economy crisis frame that explicitly or implicitly blamed workers for the sinking economy, the general audience does not seem to actually agree with them. A news article in Chung-ang on September 22, 1996, publicized the result of a national poll conducted by the newspaper polling staffs. According to the poll data, 82.8 % of respondents said that they saw the recession as coming from structural weakness in Korean economy, but only 0.2% agreed that high wage was the cause of the recession.
Roughly from the middle of the year, major Korean companies began massive personnel cuts in the name of "early retirement" or "honored retirement," by which employees were forced to leave their workplace with retirement pay. The journalistic concern with it was manifested in Chung-ang's daily series, "A typhoon of personnel cuts can be your disaster" in September. As already mentioned, this series was the only serial feature concerning unemployment issue covered by Chung-ang (see Table 3). However, it should be noted that this handful of coverage was given a special treatment. The first serial in "A typhoon_" appeared on the front page of the newspaper. This is very exceptional in Korean media practice. Moreover, shortly after the ending of the series, Chung-ang published an impressive column written by a staff writer, saying:
During our series ongoing, criss-crossing responses from readers came with a rush into our newsroom. Many readers argued that we are encouraging mass anxieties about unemployment and driving the public crazy. Other criticisms came in that the media is actually promoting the downsizing milieu for employers, who had been seeking a chance to sack employees. In contrast, several executives in firms complained that we are highlighting solely the position of workers, while companies are in the to-be-or-not-to-be situation_ (from a column, "The firm sacks me?" In Chung-ang, September 26, 1996, page 27, translated by the author).
Then, what elements in the series grabbed many readers' attention such that the above follow-up column came out? Hence the "only" two unemployment-related daily series, with the first one in Chung-ang and the second in Cho-sun, deserve a closer look. Unfortunately, because of large differences between Korean and English language, it has little sense to do a micro-level discourse analysis of translated texts. Instead, the lists of headlines in the two series presented in Table 5 can give some hints enough to capture the main characteristics of the media discourse.
Table 5 The headlines of daily series about unemployment in Cho-sun and Chung-ang
Chung-ang Daily
Cho-sun Daily
A typhoon of personnel cuts
can be your disaster
Head-downed fathers
Title
Date
Page
Title
Date
Page
(1) Wanderers out of work
9/17
1
(1) "Early retirement"
syndrome over white collars
11/30
3
(2) Farewell to
life-employment
9/18
5
(2) "Already late in 40s"
- Be prepared in 30s
12/ 1
3
(3) Nicheless job market
for underdogs
9/20
27
(3) Middle-aged salaried
men consulting psychiatrist
12/ 2
3
(4) Successful comeback
9/22
33
(4) Salaried men in fear of "early retirement"
12/ 3
3
(5) Massive downsizing:
Isn't there any alternative?
9/23
10
(5) Cheated "retirement pay"
- An underdog's crying
12/ 5
3
(6) "Who is on the list?"
- Panic arises
12/ 9
5
(7) "Crisis means chance"
- Those who toughened out
12/10
5
While Chung-ang's "A typhoon_" took the initiative in raising the "early retirement" issue, Cho-sun's "Head-downed fathers" came in December, with its closure being just two weeks before the revision of the labor law. The title "head-downed fathers" was picked from a passing-trend word denoting a middle-aged man, who had once stood for head of Korean family but now have lost his authority because of unemployment.
The two newspapers' series basically had a similar order; a series of terrible experiences of unemployed men, white-collar workers' common fear for unemployment, other variations of these scary stories, and finally a successful comeback story. Chung-ang added to a brief discussion about policy options against this trend of downsizing.
The most remarkable in the first place is that most of the stories were concentrated on the sensational depiction of the horrible experiences of unemployment. The definition of unemployed men as a victim was dramatically contrasted to other definitions of workers responsible for "high wage, low efficiency," which were frequent in national economy frames. Although these stories focused only on white-collar workers, it implies that this series roughly approximated an alternative problem definition in the perspective of employees in general. Second, despite the pro-worker problem definition, these stories had little things to say about the on-going labor reform controversies then. None of those stories placed the cause of this disaster on the business sector or government. Accordingly, the threat of "early retirement" seemed like a natural disaster that no one held accountability for happening. None of those stories mentioned pro-employee policy options in rewriting the labor law. Perhaps the official policy preference held editorially by the two newspapers kept the alternative pro-employee policy option from appearing in those stories. Accordingly, the unemployment crisis frame in these features, compared to worker group's discourse, can be thought as the fragmented subsistence crisis frame.
Third, therefore, the long-term ideological effects of this narrative on the audience lay in less a psychological process from fear to reassurance than constant awakenings of the practical need of self-discipline for survival in the no reliable world. Even though several examples of those who began small business were presented at the end of the series, this unwarranted promise does not seem a sufficient reassurance against losing the long-secured high staff position in a large company. Fourth, however, this type of media discourse was likely to contribute to the social panic in terms of short-term effects. It should be noted that the sensational media coverage lacking a sufficient consolation might amplify collective fear for unemployment.
The two conservative newspapers, rather ironically, seem to have served the official status-conferral of the public responses sensitive to unemployment. During running the "A typhoon_" series, Chung-ang conducted a poll of 574 white-collar workers in Seoul and reported the result under the headline of "one of three company employees worry about unemployment" (Chung-ang, September 24, 1996, page 10). According to the poll data, 31.4 % of respondents expressed their anxieties about unemployment, with half of males in their 40s and 50s being concerned about it. Additionally, 69.7% of respondents replied that they had no plans in case of unemployment. Similarly, along with the "Head-downed fathers" series in December, Cho-sun publicized a poll result of 475 company employees living in six cities (Cho-sun, December 12, 1996, page 2 and 5). 31.1 % of respondents were now "very" or "somewhat" worried about "early retirement," and more than 40% of those in their 40s and 50s feared forced retirement within five years.
Remarkable here is that the two survey results came from a public segment, which was likely most sensitive to the "early retirement" issue, and were given as the status of the public opinion; the two media played a role of creating and offering an index of the public opinion. These examples illustrate a process in which, as Gamson & Modigliani (1989) put it, "media discourse is part of the process by which individuals construct meaning, and public opinion is part of the process by which journalists develop and crystallize meaning in public discourse" (p.2).
The mixture of the public mood with the ideology of familism can be evidenced by the commercial success of a novel Father, written by an ex-cop amateur writer. The novel depicted a man's lifetime self-sacrifice for his family in a rather melodramatic way. After the novel appeared in August, 1996, it became a bestseller of over 700,000 by the end of the year. "Early retirement," "honored retirement," and "head-downed fathers" were words in fashion in late 1996. Those words appeared in situation comedies, dramas, talk shows and call-in shows in TV and radio programs. Both the nostalgia for patriarchal authority and the cynicism toward "head-downed fathers" were revolving around the fact that the main victims of "early retirement" or "honored retirement" were middle-aged men, who supposedly headed typical Korean families.
With the labor law revision issue more and more in rift, people became to learn that the legalization of lay-off would mean the end to life-employment and retirement pay, because it seemed as nothing but fact. Despite the incomplete unemployment crisis media frames, the heightened fear for unemployment could likely lead to the antagonistic responses to the expected pro-employer labor law revision. Finally, in the morning of one day after Christmas, people heard the breaking news that the ruling party passed the bill at dawn in absence of opposition parties, and in the afternoon heard another news that KCTU announced the immediate general strike against the "anti-democratic atrocity."
Discussion
The findings so far are summarized as follows; (1) the foreground media coverage of labor issue shows that the two leading newspapers officially held pro-employer policy preferences. (2) The background media coverage of recession indicates the high unbalance between the dominant national economy crisis frame and the marginalized unemployment crisis frame. (3) The latter case, however, had much more potentials than its face value measured quantitatively, and there are some indicators that the public responded sensitively to the unemployment issue and related cultural theme.
I do not mean by these that the two media directly caused mass anxiety or the general audience utilized only the content of the two media coverage to construct the protester discourse. Such kind of an inference is impossible; there were other media coverage of labor or recession issues not reported here. People likely had their knowledge and experiences of relevant issues and events in their life world. Still, this study captures an important aspect of the interaction between the media and the audience. Despite the considerable pro-employer media-generated issue culture, there were in the media discourse a "small" portion of potent emotional stimulants and framing resources, ready to be amplified to construct protester discourse against the revision; resistant readings among large segments required the presence of frames that have cultural resonance.
The poll result mentioned above reveals how people attached their concerns to job security issue. Only 2.3% of employees replied that they are now under the pressure of "early retirement" directly (0.8%) or indirectly (1.5%), while 74. 6% said that that they heard the unemployment of any of their acquaintances (18%) or people talking about it frequently (56.6%) (Cho-sun, December 12, 1996, page 5). The syndrome of "early retirement" cannot be explained only by simple reality checking. Rather, it was a snowballing process in which lifeworld realities, media practices, selective responses were inseparably intermingled within the general feeling of cultural shock.
One final question is left; how active was the general audience at the moment? At first glance, the general public matches with the image of fully active audience. Many people rejected the official view held by the conservative mainstream media; instead they selectively used framing resources to pursue their need; they were sensible enough to see the labor reform debate running toward pro-employer conclusion; finally they showed their power to annul the revised labor law in the early next year. In other words, they constituted an unyielding, pursuing, insightful, and empowered audience.
However, this is far from the whole story. While the anti-government general strike going on, several politicians in the ruling party complained that workers' protest was supported by the soundless panic. Advocates for the revision argued the dissidents had no reasonable alternative policy option other than canceling the law. They also insisted that the revision was intended to rescue Korean economy in the wild current of economic globalization. In late January 1997, the president admitted "a procedural mistake" of the revision and, in March, the labor law was revised again to offer a two-year grace period before introduction of lay-off. At the end of the year, Korea government asked International Monetary Fund an urgent funding to evade from financial default. In early 1998, the labor law was overturned once again and lay-off was legalized immediately.
Given these circumstances, the image of active audience is subject to more serious challenge. The popular protest is now seen as irrational one, which was driven by mass psychology. Or, more correctly, the popular resistance was contained in the context-bindedness, which kept the public from getting out of the dilemma between the two requirements of economic system and lifeworld. What lacked in the pro and con arguments about the labor reform issue were serious discussions of how the corporation-welfare system can be gradually changed to the reliable public welfare system. Because of this lack, the insightfulness and empoweredness of the audience is now seen as problematic. This is the irony of the active audience in a panic.
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