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Nth Room Incident in the Age of Popular Feminism: A Big Data Analysis

2021; Volume: 14; Issue: 14 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/aza.2021.0016

1944-6500

Joohee Kim, Jamie Chang,

Asian Culture and Media Studies

Nth Room Incident in the Age of Popular Feminism:A Big Data Analysis Kim Joohee (bio) Translated by Jamie Chang (bio) 1. Introduction From the end of 2019 to present day in 2020, the "Telegram Nth Room" case has been sending shockwaves through Korean society. The Telegram Nth Room was a cybersex crime case that occurred from the second half of 2018 to March of 2020, in which a group of men had used the Telegram messenger app to post want ads such as "Seeking Part-time Sponsors" via which they would lure women, coerce them to film 'pornographic videos (sexual exploitation videos)' of themselves, and then sell those videos to a Telegram private chat room.2 Feminist scholars and activists predicted Nth Room.3 Large spectator, distributor networks had been openly seeking illegal [End Page 261] videos of women for much longer. Those who sought to monetize this enthusiasm had looked for ways to shoot, produce, and distribute newer, more stimulating content, and to do it themselves. Exploiting the most vulnerable women in the most despicable way is common to violent industries that gain maximum profit with little to no upfront financial costs. In 2018, under the slogan, "My Daily Life Is Not Your Pornography," Korean women living in the real world formed a red wave of real pain and anger caused by digital sexual violence. However, their efforts to communicate the seriousness of the problem were often blocked by the mockery of men: "What are you, a feminist?" Without serious reflection on a collective and social level, the issue has typically been viewed as a perverse sexual problem for some men, or as a problem raised by a handful of fanatical feminists. Telegram Nth Room was a calamity waiting to happen. If Korean society refuses to address the reality of the situation, another Nth Room will surface, albeit under a different name. Therefore, we must find an exit even in the midst of tragic events. Through this article and through feminism which has entered the popular realm since 2015, such an exit might be found. This popular feminism, which can be characterized as "online firepower," has its limitation of easily overlooking the complexity of discourse, but at the same time has produced several successful examples due to the clarity of arguments and positions. One example is that the spycam video-sharing site Soranet, which started operating in 1997, was finally shut down after seventeen years. In Korea, it had been called "porn" or "spycam video" or at best "revenge porn," representing the perspective of the photographer and the spreader. Today, it newly acknowledges the victim's perspective under terms such as "illegal filming" and "sex exploitation." The videos that were formerly distributed without regulation are now illegal to possess—and to watch. Using big data analysis, this article attempts to analyze the reactions of Korean society surrounding the Nth Room incident. [End Page 262] In particular, this article focuses on the fact that Nth Room was in the midst of a wave of popular feminism, which allowed it to be widely known and problematized socially. Although various controversies and backlash have been observed, popularized feminism is evolving discursive and practical strategies to persuade the public. In addition, if the popularization of feminism means the quantitative explosion of feminist discourse, it can be defined as a massive scale of data—Big Data. Therefore, this article will seek to trace the footsteps of online feminist activism through big data analysis of the Nth Room. 2. Methodology This paper was able to collect big data with support from DaumSoft's service "Sometrend Biz." A service that collects and provides analysis of big data centered on social media such as Twitter, Instagram, Naver Blog, Naver News, and online community bulletin boards for specific keywords, Sometrend Biz is a convenient tool to examine Internet users' opinions and media trends by period. This service is made up of "real-time monitoring," which looks at the trend of the keyword of interest over the last twenty-four hours; "news monitoring," which looks at the spread of recent news articles; "search word analysis-trend," which shows the buzz trend and share of interest keywords for up...