2008, Vol.15, No.3

Informatization Policy 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 4.08

pISSN : 1598-3498
https://journal.kci.go.kr/nia

A main issue in the study of online political participation is to reveal a relation between Internet use pattern and level of political participation. Studies in this area have tried to solve a question whether the Internet creates new political participation. Two contradictory hypothesis have been suggested and tested to reveal an impact of Internet on political participation. The one is mobilization hypothesis which argues the Internet can create new political participation. The other is reinforcement hypothesis which rebuts an impact of the Internet and prospects that the Internet will reinforce the current pattern of political participation. In the future study of online political participation two research problems need to be dealt with. The first is to examine closely a causal relation between the Internet use pattern and the level of political participation. The second one is to define more specifically independent variable, Interent use, and dependent variable, political participation.

The world has been making active use of IT(information technology) infrastructure for the energy efficiency. Especially, EU’s energy informatization strategy is prominent in terms of its scope and systematicness, based on participation and collaboration. Korea, however, does research on energy-IT convergence focusing just on power grid and does not have a long history of research on energy-IT convergence. We carry out an in-depth study on comparing the energy efficiency policies of EU and Korea in terms of the R&D process, range, and direction. We try to draw implications in setting an strategy on the future convergence policy of energy and IT. The energy efficiency strategy and informatization strategy should be closely connected and policy makers should show concrete action plans to apply the next generation IT for energy efficiency. Furthermore, the policy makers should pay attention to measures to cope with the risks temming from energy informatization.

This paper examines the online presence of all 12 candidates and their parties during the campaign period of the 2007 presidential election in South Korea. The present study looks at the characteristics of the latest presidential election of Korea based on webometric and network data. The data are analysed in order to identify dynamically changing properties of the Korean political sphere on cyberspace. As results, the online visibility of each party and candidate measured by the webometric method shows that there indeed exists a gap between major and minor political actors on the Internet. The temporal networked structure represented on hyperlinked relations among the candidates and parties during the election reveals each player’s popularity in the electoral race studied in this paper. Overall, the findings are tightly consistent with the general climate of offline politics of the country.