Synopsis:
In the last episode of Live, the media has portrayed the actions of the police, specifically Sang Su, as an act of violence and danger to the public. While the media has intentionally opted out significant details of the incidence and the upper ranks prioritizing public relations, justice was bestowed and Sang Su’s actions were declared as rational and fulfilling the duties of the police. As the story was approaching its ending, things turned out well for everyone and Oh Yang Chon returned to the police force being fully recovered.
Discussion:
The issue of being framed through the media exists in every part of the world. While these act of framing may be through the utilization of fake news, it can also happen, just like in Live, by leaving out essential information about the situation. It was said through one of the actors in the drama that “people aren’t even interested in things like that,” (ep. 18, 37:50) and that what only concerns the public and media coverage is the end result. News broadcasting agencies were primarily established todeliver and inform the public about issues but as capitalism became more dominant, the main priority of news agencies became viewership, even if it came to using phrases or words to frame people to be murderers when they are actually heroes.
As citizens and people tend to believe what they see and hear in the news to be fully true, the rate at which these information travel in Korea is extremely fast and during the travelling period, what was spoken as a “could be” turns into a fact with a negative connotation. Canada is about a 100 times larger than the size of Korea but ironically, Korea has approximately 16 million more people. We can imagine how fast information can travel in such a densely populated area.
One example which demonstrates this is the case of Youtuber Yang Ye Won and the owner of the photo studio that caused numerous uprisings and debates. To summarize the incident, the Youtuber filed a suit against the photo studio owner that she was sexually abused and forced to take nude photo shoots. However, messages exchanged between the two showed otherwise. While this story was one of the hottest topics during the summer of 2018, news travelled extremely fast and the media took part on what was only interesting and information that could bring more viewership to their channels. Being framed as a perverted freak, the owner of the photo studio committed suicide with a will that reportedly vented his frustration about the investigation in his letter. He claimed that it will not be fair to him and that the police and the media only want to listen to the victim (Rapir, 2018). It is too early to conclude whether who’s the real victim as the trial is still ongoing ,but Yang’s statement about the incident did not match the evidences so far.
According to a study by professor Wedding from University of Missouri-Columbia, one of the main reasons for people who consider suicide is due to being victims of bullying (Wedding, 2008). From the previous example, it is still not concluded that the owner actually did what he is being accused of; yet, people around him and the whole country hated him the day after the incident went viral, from a single statement, not a fact. The hatred that not only the owner had to endure, but also his friends and family that were also being bullied by the country.
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Discussion Questions:
- Do you think framing comes from a biased viewpoint or are done intentionally to draw public attention?
- How can we educate the public that not everything they see in the media/news are true?
Bibliography:
Wedding, D. (n.d.). Commonalities Between Suicide in Korea, Japan and the United States. Retrieved from https://dmh.mo.gov/docs/mentalillness/wedding.pdf.
Rapir, J. (2018, July 10). Yang Ye Won Sexual Harassment Case Update: Studio Director Involved In Case Commits Suicide, Leaves Will. Retrieved from http://en.koreaportal.com/articles/45952/20180710/yang-ye-won-sexual-harassment-case-update-studio-director-involved-in-case-commits-suicide-leaves-will.htm
With media’s invasive power these days, it is extremely difficult to educate the public on many sides of one issue. I think the first point in educating the public is reminding them that news sources and media are extremely biased. By effectively showing the public the bias of each source, the public is able to understand the bias their information may have. For example, I consider myself to be left-leaning in American politics but only recently learned that a news source I use, CNN, is generally left-leaning as well. Knowing this, I will often cross-reference my information with more neutral news sources, in order to understand the true information. Once the public is educated on this, they may be more inclined to check other sources. However, this, alone, is not a perfect solution. Even though one may know a source is biased, they may still use it as it aligns with their beliefs. Thus, I think it is important to ensure the public is constantly encountering diverse sources. It is easy to seclude yourself with like-minded media sources. But, through advertisements and promoted content, I think exposing communities to a diverse range of media sources will also help to remind people that there are many perspectives. (Word count: 206)
Building off on Sophie’s comment about how education is the main breakthrough in removing the stigma about this issue is quite prominent based off our sex work class. The media is quite biased and thinks extremely negatively about sex work. In episode 7 and 8 discussions, I saw one screenshot with someone pinned against a cop car saying, “they chose to do this.” This is the mentality that many South Korean’s have and even some of them think it’s part of their culture. One of the lines from the sex work documentary we watched that stuck with me is, “Imagine having the same meal every day, it would get quite boring no?” While leading the discussion I brought up topics and comments about this and thought that education would be the end to the sex trafficking in South Korea. Much like how we are taught not to smoke cigarettes and consume drugs if the sex education class was taught more realistically I feel that it would make a huge difference in how sex is seen in South Korea. I believe the prostitution industry in South Korea is so prominent because of how sex is taught in the nation; it simply isn’t. It’s taught as being something terrible and harmful when in reality it is a part of human life. Therefore causing mischevious young adults to go out into these red light districts and finding out for themselves. Ultimately, I feel that education and change in media biases are the beginning of a change in South Korea’s mentality on sex and essentially putting an end to sex trafficking.
I think the framing comes from a biased viewpoint because all people have their own values and beliefs about the society, and people try to put the bias into the framing. Therefore, the framing contains the biased viewpoint, even though it should be unbiased and keep the neutral side to deliver the fact through the media. Due to this biased viewpoint of framing, sometimes, the media delivers the untruth news, and the public believes it because they think that it is informed from the news. The public should realize that some things are not true, but they usually do not recognize it, so we need to let them know about it. However, I think we cannot educate them not to believe that not everything is true because I guess that if the public starts not to believe the things from the media, they may not be able to trust the truth as well, and people argue, so as a result, the media will be destroyed. Therefore, I argue that instead of educating them not to believe everything, several people think of the issues and publish each opinion about the fact, and then the public think of the issues in each perspective not as long as the truth is distorted.
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I believe that the framing comes from both aspects. There are people that frames others just to get attention/following other peoples comments and people who frames from their bias. Lately in Korea, young generations nowadays posts comments about framing someone from agreeing other peoples comment and adding onto that comment without knowing the actual story just to get attention/likes and be part of the group. It seems like any comments from the media that I have witnessed, people tend to follow one person’s bias comment of framing someone like a trend and these causes people to believe that the false information is true. Because of this “trend” the media also posts false information and bias information maybe because they agree and think it is true or could be a way to attract more viewers with the hot, trending issue. Frames through people’s bias and the media posting also posting their bias cause more people to believe in the false information and creates more blame and framing as well as people utilizing these information to get attention. I personally think that people should read or watch different perspectives of the media and news that talks about the subject they are using to blame and framing others before posting their bias. Since bias comes from the viewpoint solely on the person’s belief and their educational aspects which can be the truth but at the same time can be the false because it is one sided.
First of all, I think that the purpose of framing done by the media press is to intentionally draw public attention. The sad reality is that people are not going to read articles that sound plain and boring; instead, they will click on the news that are more emotionally arousing. By titling in such way, I believe it creates two opposite effects. One is that, as stated, the news articles are able to attract more viewers and the chances of them being viewed rise significantly, in comparison to fact only news articles. But another effect, in my opinion, is that if the article title implies one interpretation, but the article itself does NOT seem to support the title, but sounds rational and covers both sides of a story, viewers may get confused and instead of finishing the article, they may leave the site. More severe effect is afterwards when the viewers that exited the article without finishing it, may remember the argument as the ones that triggered their emotion and believe only the words that were used to attract viewers as the key words from the writer. To better educate our people that not everything they see in the media are true, I think one we can develop is to create another section for each cases. So we can look into the case and we can also look into counterarguments if there is section with relevant articles. By doing so, people would not have to search the case to see all relevant articles and therefore are more likely to consider both sides.
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Personally, I believe that the media can be considered as a good source to know about the issues all around the world. However, media is not an one hundred percent trustworthy source. People tend to believe what is actually on media. Like the Young Jun’s Youtuber example, people believed the woman because by seeing or watching the video that she had posted on the media seemed very true since she was sobbing, and it seemed so hard for her to say such incidents that had happened her. As a Korean student who had encountered the story of her through the Korean media, I first felt bad for her since the story seemed so true. I personally felt sorry for her as well, but I wasn’t angry or anything toward the man. However, some women took the incident seriously and verbally attacked the studio-owner. But after a few more investigations, the Police found out that the Youtuber was actually lying about the “Me Too” incident and it was her choice to do such photoshoots. However, the photo-studio’s owner still committed suicide and left a suicide note saying that no one had believed him even though he was telling people the truth and she was the one who was telling a lie. I just feel sad that in Korea, every bad or framed incident tend to lead them to committing suicides; I am not sure if we can educate the public that not everything, they see in the media are true. To me, it seems like people know that everything that we see on the media are not true but psychologically and ironically tend to believe that everything ‘is’ true.
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Hey team,
A really insightful discussion to finish off the term for you – I really appreciate the points of view brought up by Julian that framing might also be a popularity-gaining strategy and have nothing to do with the truth, and Bomi’s connection of that idea to the cultural shaming and its penalties for the individual. I think that presenting facts as neutral has its limits – it can oftentimes be up to the consumer, who doesn’t have shareholders or political interests to please, to really be discerning, given how much content is controlled by the flows of money and power nowadays. Overall, it’s been interesting to watch this group increase in insights over the course of blogging. Thanks for a great term.