Digitally Mediated Mobilization in South Korea: Women’s March and Collective Identity Building Online

Abstract

This paper explores collective identity building in a feminist online community that in 2018 organized the largest women’s march in South Korean history. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative content analyses of the community’s bulletin boards, this study describes the process through which members of the community developed their cognitive boundaries and their interactional and emotional connections with one another. My finding shows that the language used in the community shifted over time as the participants came to distinguish themselves from other preexisting feminist communities. I argue that protocols set by the leadership team of this online community played an important role in collective identity construction by providing guidelines for boundary drawing and by promoting positive interactions among members. My research also discusses how this leadership operated as “hidden leaders” in shaping collective identity, by navigating the definition of “us” in the context of Korean feminism and encouraging solidarity building among anonymous participants.