The emerging mediascape, same old theories? a case study of online news diffusion in Korea

Abstract

This article aims to re-examine the main ideas of traditional diffusion study in the context of the internet. Two news stories, one initiated by an established news organization and one uploaded by an individual internet user, were selected for our case study. The study analyzed how a news story gets carried on through various websites of media organizations and individuals.We found that the original stories undergo transformations in terms of content and form over time in the diffusion process. The authors hence introduce a new concept, 'seed news', in order to explain this transformative online news diffusion phenomenon. The concept of seed news may subsume the manifold and dynamic process of diffusion, addition, displacement, evolution, and decline of the news story. It also comes to terms with the multifarious dimensions of transmission and the active interplay between the media and users, or among the users themselves. © The Author(s) 2010.