Originally written February 21st, 2019
Introduction:
When discussing K-pop, it is important to note that it is one of the main aspects of Korean popular culture. Korean popular culture, aka Hallyu (Korean wave) includes Korean music, television shows, films, online games, and comics. For many in the community, K-pop (along with K-dramas) is the entryway to learning about other Korean popular cultures (Choi, 2015).
In researching the K-Pop community, I’ve learned that the success of K-Pop can be attributed to two areas: K-pop fandom and their utilization of social media. This is how K-pop distinguishes itself as a genre and a popular subculture. It’s a global and social media-driven force steered by its unique fandom that shows no signs of stopping. This unique mix of social media and fandom are the heart of the information needs and information-seeking behavior of the K-pop community.
Currently, “information behavior” is the preferred term use to describe the many ways in which human beings interact with information. Specifically, it’s the ways in which people seek and utilize information And, an individual or group’s information need is their desire to locate and obtain information to satisfy a conscious or unconscious need. (Bates, 2010).
Information seeking can be analyzed either as a job-related or nonwork related context. Nonwork information seeking is called everyday life information seeking or ELIS. This method studies the ways people access and use various information sources to meet their information needs in areas such as health, consumption and leisure (Savolainen, 2010).
It is through this theory we can understand K-pop community’s information-seeking behaviors and information needs.
Information Needs:
What are the information needs of the K-pop community? Under ELIS we can separate them into two types: problem-specific information and orienting information (Savolainen, 2010). Examples of problem-specific information include facts about a group such as the date they debuted, the name of their fan club, each group members name, ages, and position in the group. Orienting information includes watching music shows (M!Countdown, Music Bank, Music Core, and Inkigayo, The Show and Show Champion) where idols promote new songs by performing live.
Other examples of orienting information include watching an idol livestream on the popular V app aka VLive, participating in and or monitoring the scheduled events a group has when they make a comeback (when a group releases new music), or viewing variety shows that idols create themselves (Run BTS!, Monsta X-Ray) or make guest appearances (Weekly Idol, Idol Room) (Tucci, 2016). These are but a few examples of the community’s in formation needs.
But how does the community use, find, and create information?
Information Behavior:
In ELIS, the role of the internet can play a significant factor. As I’ve stated previously one aspect K-Pop’s success is the utilization of social media by said fandom. The K-Pop community is an extremely organized and collective information community.
The organization and collectiveness starts in Korea with the official fan clubs which are backed by the idol’s or idol group’s music label. Fans and the idols they support are very loyal to each other. In regard to the fandom, Park (2013) describes them in more detail in his article “From Fragile Cosmopolitanism to Sustainable Multicultural Vigor”:
“K-pop fandom in and outside of Korea is characterized by its very committed and dynamic fan clubs. In fact, the nature of K-pop fan clubs is quite different from their counterparts in the West. They are much more organized and systematized in their activities and play a much more active role in the affairs and activities of their idols. On behalf of entertainment management companies, for example, they carry out publicity stunts and devise ways to sell more CDs and expose their idol groups’ appeal to wider audiences. In Korea, they are also engaged in philanthropic and goodwill activities, such as donating rice to the poor, donating money for a good cause in the name of their favorite stars, and doing volunteer work in order to help improve the image of their favorite idols. It would also not be an exaggeration to say that the success or failure of new idol groups hinges largely on the role of fan clubs.” (Park, 2013).
Outside of the official fan clubs found in Korea and other Asian countries (where the K-Pop companies have distribution deals-Japan, China, and Taiwan) many fans have organized into unofficial fan communities via social media (E. Lee, 2012). Online, members of the community are called netizens (international fans) and or K-netizens (Korean fans) which means “citizen of the net” (Tucci, 2016).
Together these groups form a well-organized collective community that creates, distributes, and promotes official media and fan-created content online.
Creating:
Netizens use social media to create unofficial fan sites. These sites rely on volunteers who are tasked with providing translations for news articles, TV appearances, etc. They also organize donation drives to purchase gifts for the idols. In 2016, a B.A.P. fanbase named ‘BAP’s Helping Hands’ organized and surpassed their goal ($25,000) and raised $ 27,736 build a school in Ghana, Africa (AllKpop, 2016). Fan cafes are also another way for fans to retrieve information.
Aside from these two, netizens utilize social networking platforms to access and retrieve the information. Once such platform is the microblogging site Tumblr. “K-pop and Korean artists in general are incredibly popular on Tumblr,” According to the Forbes article, “Tumblr Announces 50 Most Popular K-Pop Stars Of 2018” (Herman, 2018). The platform’s tagging feature is utilized heavily, as users create unique tags to help specific fan communities identify posts. Tags also allow users to see real time updates (Lee, 2012).
Tumblr allows for sub-communities within the K-Pop community to create a space for themselves. An example are Tumblr blogs created for Black K-Pop fans. Tumblrs such as Black Kpop Fan Network, and Black Kpop Fans, are spaces for these fans to not only talk about their favorite idols and groups but also to vent about issues in the fandom that concern them such as racism, anti-blackness, and cultural appropriation.
Twitter is another platform that fans use to create fandom related hashtags to trend on Twitter. Recently, J-Hope-a member of one the most recognized idol groups BTS-celebrated his birthday. To show their support, BTS’s fandom ARMY created Twitter hashtags which topped worldwide trends (Hong, 2019).
In their article “Comparative trends in global communication networks of #Kpop tweets” authors Choi, Heo, Kim, and Park (2014) researched “the communication world that Twitter mediates in the context of global conversations centering on the topic of Korean pop music (Kpop).” They collected all Tweets including the hashtag #kpop from November 9, 2011 to February 15, 2012, and then used a technique that draws upon bibliometric and informetric approaches called webometrics to visualize the #kpop Twitter networks in 6 regions of the world. Some of the research results revealed the following: “Twitter users define and shape the structure and content of their Twitter communication, which provides support for the duality of Twitter…Finally, the results indicate that Twitter is used to mediate various forms of communication…” (Choi, Heo, Kim, and Park 2014).
YouTube is another social media platform that the community employs. K-Pop music videos, and clips or full episodes of reality show are available on the video-sharing website. Users also create videos to share information. I’ve stated the following in my previous blog post, “Blog Post #2 Information Seeking Communities: An Exploration of the KPop Community:”
“To help fill this void, other community members create YouTube videos titled “Introduction to_____” …the various videos feature vital information which help the community. The featured information often lists the group’s name, the name of their fandom, individual members’ stage and full names, age and birthday, position in the group (i.e. Visual, leader, maknae (youngest member), main vocal, main rapper, etc.), and more.” (Harrison, 2019).
Out of the three platforms mentioned, YouTube is an important gateway to those who seek K-Pop related information. YouTube and other social media networks have made it easier for K-Pop to reach a wider audience. Park also makes this observation in his article:
“Another distinguishing aspect of K-pop is that its success is largely owed to the advent of social media networks, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter (Kim 2013). Among these, YouTube is particularly noteworthy since it has become one of the most, if not the most, popular music sharing platforms since the mid-2000s. Given this, it can be argued that the popularity of K-pop coincides with the growing acceptance of social media networks.” (Park, 2013).
This figure from “Lessons from K-Pop’s Global Success,” (Min-Soo, 2012) also emphasizes the importance of YouTube in relation to K-Pop, as it shows the number of K-Pop views on YouTube in 2011. It shows view numbers from various countries each having views exceeding 10 million.
Overall, fan created-content is a defining and essential part of the KPop community (E. Lee, 2012).
Distributing:
When it comes to distribution, social media leads the way by driving the growth of K-Pop. These platforms facilitate the distribution of official and fan-created content. Online sites and fan cafes play a major role in distributing news about idols. They serve as a forum through which information is shared. It’s believed that the Internet enhances loyalty and solidarity among fans (Park 2013).
One major source of distribution is Korean media-print, broadcast, etc.-that has been translated and or subbed. To secure distribution, international fans often rely on their Korean counterparts to obtain copies of the original material. Once they’ve received copies, they then translate and sub them and then distribute to them to the community. This also applies to music videos and interviews. Upon release, some fans will analyze and recap the videos frame by frame. They then engage with other members of the community via reblogging on Tumblr. In her article “As Seen On the Internet: The Recap Translation in English-Language in K-Drama Fandoms,” Lee describes the recap as a fan-based information-sharing method:
“As a fan-based information-sharing method, the recap propagates the latest information on the fans’ source material, providing these communities with increased impetus to regularly recreate the intensity of their relationship through discussions as much on the recapper’s bias as on the source texts themselves. Each recapper’s individual voice, opinions, wit, and consistency of presence are as privileged as the episodic information she or he represents; significantly the recapper lays no claim to any final interpretation. Instead the interpretation is a distributed collaborative process, changing with each response posted to the comments section.” (R. Lee, 77).
Instructions/steps are another form of distribution. Returning to fan cafes, a lot of times due to the language barrier, K-netizens are the only ones to have access to them. Fan sites such as Soompi will provide instructions on how to access fan cafes and fan clubs (Soompi, 2016). They can also cover the steps to voting for award shows such as MAMA’s, or how to attend weekly music shows, fansigns, and concerts or musicals.
Promoting:
The community also plays an active role in the promotion of KPop. Fans will mobilize to stream live performances, purchase albums en masse to gain a high ranking, and encourage fans to increase views on an idol’s music videos. For their most recent comeback, Monsta X released the music video for their song “Alligator” on YouTube. In the comment section below were multiple comments from the group’s fandom Monbebes about viewing goals for the MV.
While there are many positive ways netizens utilize social media to support idols, it’s important to note that netizens have also used it to bully and harass fans and the idols they’re fans of.
To conclude, social media is an integral part of the K-Pop community’s information behavior. It has changed how people approach and consume cultural products. There is no doubt that it’s the fastest and most convenient way to access K-Pop (Jin, 2018).
Conclusion:
ELIS, everyday life information seeking is the theory through which I’ve explored the information behavior and needs of the K-Pop community. Under ELIS the information needs are two-fold: there are problem-specific information needs and orientating information needs that the community are seeking. As a result, the information behavior of the community revolves around their utilization of social media which plays a significant role in ELIS. By using the internet in an organized and collective manner, the K-Pop community creates, distributes, and promotes official media and fan-created content online, which has resulted in the global success of K-Pop.
References:
AllKpop. (2016). B.A.P fans raise money to build a school in Africa. Retrieved from https://www.allkpop.com/article/2016/11/bap-fans-raise-money-to-build-a-school-in-africa
Bates, M. (2010). Information Behavior. In Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, 3rd Ed. Retrieved from https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/bates/articles/information-behavior.html
Choi, J. (2015). Hallyu versus Hallyu-hwa: Cultural Phenomenon versus Institutional Campaign. In Lee S. and Nornes A. (Ed.), Hallyu 2.0: The Korean Wave in the Age of Social Media (pp. 31-52). University of Michigan Press.
Choi, S., Heo, Y., Kim, M., & Park, H. (2014). Comparative trends in global communication networks of #Kpop tweets. Quality & Quantity, 48(5), 2687–2702.
Harmoincar. (2016). K-Pop 101: How to Navigate Fanclubs vs. Fancafes. Retrieved from https://www.soompi.com/article/807807wpp/k-pop-101-how-to-navigate-fanclubs-vs-fancafes
Harrison, T. (2019). Blog Post #2 Information Seeking Communities: An Exploration of the KPop Community. Retrieved from https://ischoolblogs.sjsu.edu/info/talishah/blog-post-2-information-seeking-communities-an-exploration-of-the-kpop-community/
Herman, T. (2018). Tumblr Announces 50 Most Popular K-Pop Stars Of 2018. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/tamarherman/2018/11/29/tumblr-announces-50-most-popular-k-pop-stars-in-2018/#1ac7e69344a9
Hong, C. (2019). Birthday Celebrations For BTS’s J-Hope Top Twitter’s Worldwide Trends. Soompi. Retrieved from https://www.soompi.com/article/1304469wpp/birthday-celebrations-for-btss-j-hope-top-twitters-worldwide-trends
Jin, D. (2018). An Analysis of the Korean Wave as Transnational Popular Culture: North American Youth Engage Through Social Media as TV Becomes Obsolete. International Journal of Communication 12(2018), 404–422.
Lee, E. (2012). Kpop: Fans, Internet, and Influence. Academia. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/10271948/Kpop_Fans_Internet_and_Influence
Lee, R. (2014). As Seen On the Internet: The Recap Translation in English-Language in K-Drama Fandoms. Choe Y. and Kim K. (Ed.), The Korean Popular Culture Reader (pp. 76-97). North Carolina: Duke University Press.
Min-Soo, S. (2012). Lessons from K-pop’s global success. SERI Quarterly, 5(3), 60-66,9. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/docview/1030962287?accountid=10361
Park G. (2013). Understanding the K-pop Phenomenon and Hallyu: From Fragile Cosmopolitanism to Sustainable Multicultural Vigor. Korean Journal, 53(4), 5-13.
Savolainen, R. (2009). Everyday life information seeking. In Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences. Retrieved from
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780849397110/chapters/10.1081%2FE-ELIS3-120043920
Tucci, S. (2016). K-pop A to Z: A beginner’s dictionary. The Daily Dot. Retrieved from https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/kpop-common-terms-to-know/
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