About the lecturer:

Hyun Gyung Kim is an assistant professor at Seoul Women's University. Her research interests include feminist cultural studies, postcolonial and Cold War regimes and gender, qualitative methodology, and visual material-based methodology. She has published articles on the cultural politics of women political leaders' appearance in the Korean Media, the Korean Wave celebrity and the K-drama conglomerate, neoliberal postfeminism, and the relationship between Japanese military sexual slavery and the Cold War, both Korean and English.

 

Abstract:

It is hard to deny that digital platforms have become a space where all human activity, including the digital expression of emotions, can be quantified and exploited by the companies that own them. This exploitation is aimed at maximizing profits by mediating between consumers, advertisers, service providers, producers, and suppliers. Women, whose bodies and sexuality were consistently monetized even before the digital economy became widespread, are now even more susceptible to objectification. The controversy that erupted in July 2024 in Korea, after the YouTube channel named GARCERO INSTITUTE published the illegal filming of a famous female YouTuber and the threats made by cyberwrecker channels without her consent, is a stark example of how violence against women in the name of justice becomes a direct channel for profit in the digital economy. In this special lecture, I will delve into the ways in which justice without public sense is amplified on digital platforms and how it shapes the 'media figure' of the woman in question.

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About the lecturer:

Han Sang Kim is an associate professor of sociology and the inaugural chair of the Department of Transnational Visual Studies at Ajou University. His research and teaching interests include visual sociology, qualitative methods, migration and racism, and the sociology of film and media. He has conducted research and written on the themes of film archives, ethics of photographic representation, post/colonial visual culture, racism, and mobilities. He is the author of Cine-Mobility: Twentieth-Century Transformations in Korea’s Film and Transportation (Harvard University Asia Center, 2022) and articles published in peer-reviewed journals, including positions: asia critique, The Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Korean Studies, Inter-Asian Cultural Studies, and several other journals in Korean. As the Vice President of the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA), he is currently planning IVSA’s 42nd annual conference at Ajou University, Suwon, South Korea, June 25-28, 2025, the association’s first conference in East Asia.

 

Abstract:

Digital vigilantism refers to “a form of collective justice against a perceived transgression by an individual or group” (Allen and van Zyl 2020, 2). It is further defined as “a process where citizens are collectively offended by other citizen activity and respond through coordinated retaliation on digital media, including mobile devices and social media platforms” (Trottier 2017, 56). Initially, digital vigilantism was understood primarily in terms of activities such as doxing or the actions of so-called “netizen investigation units,” where anonymous internet users participated in collective retaliation or attacks (Lee 2014, 97–99; Namgung 2017, 10–13). Recent studies have broadened this definition to include practices such as “scambaiting, hacktivism, citizen-led cyber-stings, and crowdsourcing” (Favarel-Garrigues et al. 2020, 190; Chang and Poon 2017, 1913–1914). Moreover, it encompasses activities like “organized leaking” of information by civic actors to pressure institutions for systemic change or reform (Loveluck 2020, 7). These definitions primarily focus on collective and anonymous behaviors. 

However, as video streaming platforms like YouTube have become dominant in social media, there has been increased attention on extralegal justice enacted by individual creators. These creators harness the speed, dynamism, and, most importantly, the influencer status of solo media figures. This study examines the phenomenon of so-called “cyber wreckers” (k. saibŏ rek’ŏ), individuals who position themselves as executors of justice. At first glance, this phenomenon might seem to diverge from the collective nature of digital vigilantism due to the focus on the individual’s influencer status. Nevertheless, this study, detailed in its methodology, conceptualizes cyber wreckers as collective media constructs and explores how they construct masculinized personas as “real-life superheroes” (Meade and Castle 2021, 1088). Through this perspective, the study investigates the ways in which these figures perform and embody extralegal justice in the digital age.

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Moderator: Gwendolyn Domning

Time & Venue:

Friday, 24th January 2025 - 31st January 2025

Online:

Webex