Locating Naver in the Era of Platform Imperialism: The Rise of a Dominant Local Platform
Jason Han Gyul Park 12283436
Research Master’s Thesis New Media and Digital Culture
Supervisor: Alex Gekker
Abstract
With the ever-growing expansions of US-based digital platform services – Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, a vast range of cultural, economic and sociopolitical processes – production, distribution, and curation of contents – are modulated, governed and rendered through platform logics. As platforms with infrastructural functions reshape the power distribution between online and offline within social, cultural and political contexts, some scholars have conceptualized current platform geo-politics as platform imperialism or digital colonialism, highlighting lopsided power relations in terms of dataflow. In this context, Naver, a South Korean platform, is a unique case as the company is successfully thriving as a dominant local platform in South Korea despite the presence of US counterparts. By exploring the technical evolution of Naver through existing
frameworks in platform studies, software studies and infrastructure studies, the thesis situates Naver as a dominant alternative platform. In doing so, it not only demonstrates that the infrastrualisation of platforms is, too, evident in the non-Western context but also critically calls to revisit the notion of platform imperialism in a broader geopolitical context. More importantly, in understanding how Naver can maintain itself as a dominant platform against US tech giants, this thesis departs from the existing discourse in platform studies and turns to examine the cultural aspects through comparative interface analyses on search results of Google and Naver. By probing into a unique sociocultural element embedded into the working of Naver which I refer to as ‘Koreanness’, the paper argues that the very role of culture should be taken into consideration when investigating the construct of platforms and platformisation in a local context.
Keywords:
Table of Contents
Introduction ... 1
0.1 Naver and historical overview of Korean digital landscape ... 2
Chapter 1 ... 5
1.1 Platform and its platformising power ... 5
1.2 Revisiting Platform Imperialism ... 8
Chapter 2... 14
2.1 Interface: beyond governance ... 14
2.2 What is Korean about Naver? ... 17
2.3 Reading Naver’s algorithms as a sociocultural artefact ... 21
Chapter 3 ... 26
3.1 Naver and Google: Two Different Contextualisers ... 26
3.2 Dogok Station as a Space and a Place: contextualising the physical spatiality in Seoul ... 28
3.3 What difference does Naver make? ... 33
Conclusion ... 36
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Introduction
As the developments of US-based tech giants are centred around expanding their own platforms, much attention from the public as well as the scholars have been drawn to the overarching impacts of these companies on various socio-technical aspects (Naughton; Plantin et al.). Often referred as the big five for its immense global market values or GAFAM in short, the extent to which Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft play a role in mediating data transactions (and thus economic and socio-cultural capitals) is increasingly prominent. Google and Facebook, together, account for 61.4% of the global digital advertising market while Amazon is showing a gradual growth in the sector (Burrel; Feiner). Facebook is dominating the global market for social media services with a share of 69.7% while Google takes 90.23% of the search engine market globally (Statcounter; Clement). More recently, Amazon and Google, with its AI-powered hardware - Amazon Echo and Nest Hub – and software products such as Alexa and Google Assistant, attempt to situate their services as yet another central hub for accumulating and mediating the new type of data emerging with the rise of smart home devices including smart lightbulbs, speakers and coffee machines; data inside the home. As van Dijck et al. describe the current politics of platform ecosystems which the aforementioned US tech companies are building worldwide, the current new media landscape is shaped as “a stellar system – a cosmos that revolves around a handful of major planetary stars”(van Dijck et al. 17).
Indeed, such overarching influence of GAFAM in various socio-economical and techno-cultural aspects of everyday lives across the world has left little room for the discussion on the diversity of platform geo-politics. As Nieborg and Poell rightfully point out, there has been a lack of a wider geographical perspective on platform studies (15); Chinese platforms including Baidu and Tencent are occasionally mentioned as the only examples of non-US platforms. Chinese platforms are unique in that their status as local dominant platforms is achieved predominantly through legal restrictions in the market against (mostly) the US tech giants. Google and other major US platform services are blocked in the country due to a techno-nationalistic scheme which facilitates local platforms to flourish and develop into infrastructuralised platforms (Plantin and Seta).
In this context, Naver, a South Korean digital platform, is an interesting case to note as the platform is successfully maintaining its position as a dominant local platform in South Korea despite
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the presence of US platforms in the market. Situating Naver as a local as well as an alternative platform, therefore, largely serves two purposes: 1. it contributes to further broadening the platform geopolitics which has been mostly Western-centric or dichotomous (GAFAM in the US or BAT in China) within the discourse of platform studies 2. by arguably suggesting that a diversity within the global platform dynamics should be considered, it challenges the very notion of platform imperialism that GAFAM enforce a globalisation of US cultural standards regarding what is allowed in the global data flow. This thesis focuses on exploring and conceptually understanding the working of Naver as a local platform in terms of its techno-commercial features as well as cultural aspects. In doing so, it demonstrates how Naver maintains its unique position as a dominant local platform in Korea in the age of so-called platform imperialism which many claim that there is no room for the growth of non-US platforms (Jin; Kwet). By looking closely at the way in which Naver curates, mediates and presents information within its platform ecosystem on the interface level, this thesis seeks to
delineate the very role that (digital) culture plays in constructing the architecture of a local dominant platform. Throughout the explorations, various aspects of Naver will be discussed in relation to that of Google’s because both tech companies 1) have undergone a similar evolution in their business expansions; from a search portal to a major digital platform under which smaller (external) platforms operate through its techno-commercial tools such as APIs, 2) dominate the search engine markets (as mentioned above, Google accounts for 90.23% of the global search engine market while Naver holds 72.8% of the market dominance in South Korea) and, most importantly, 3) utilise search engine as a crucial hub for the integrations of their sectoral and infrastructural platforms as well as advertising revenue generations.
0.1 Naver and historical overview of Korean digital landscape
Despite the fleeting discomfort one may sense possibly from the self-awareness that Google has already entered too many aspects of one’s everyday life, the phrase ‘Google it’ still remains as the de facto answer when it comes to gathering information online except for countries that banned or limited the access to Google such as China, Russia and Iran. Less discussed in the field of media studies is South Korea where the world’s biggest search engine is only third in popularity with a 9% of market share, following DaumKakao (17.3%), a South Korean digital platform. An astounding market share of 72.8% which Naver currently holds explains as to why the phrase ‘Naver it’ is much
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more commonly used in South Korea (DMC Report, 2018 Online Consumer Report). Naver has started its service as a web portal in 1999, a year after Google, and has ever since been the biggest portal in Korea. As Steinberg points out in interrogating pre-platfrom productions across East Asia which came before Silicon Valley-led platform era, it is important to understand the peculiar historical context of Korean new media landscape which, to a certain degree, led to a crucial foundation wherein a local platform can develop.(Steinberg, The Platform Economy).
Known as one of the most wired countries with the highest internet and mobile phone penetration rates in the world (Lankov; OECD), Korea’s early establishment of internet
infrastructure and its ICT developments made its unique internet history wherein the use of local internet services has significantly outnumbered what were known to be the largest global internet-based services (mainly from US). In early 2000s, Buddy Buddy and NateOn, two of South Korean PC messengers have overtaken the then global biggest PC messenger, MSN which was initially the leading service in the country with a market share of 40% (H. Choi; Wang). Similarly, Cyworld, a South Korean social networking site often mentioned as an earlier example of Web 2.0 before Myspace (Alexander 158; Baym 386; Sams and Park), had its head start in the market with a share of almost 60% as the company was founded and began its service four years earlier than its rivalry Myspace which closed down its Korean office after 10 months in 2008 (Sugil Kim; Yousung Kim). While these Korean services, as with their Western counterparts, too, lost its luster as they failed to keep pace with the rapidly shifting new media landscape led by the advent of smartphones and mobile-centric new services, Naver is among the few that has successfully transformed into a
monolithic internet company, dominating the media landscape in the country to this day. This is not to say that such historical context of the country’s media environment led Korean users to have an exclusive preference for domestic digital services. After the closure of Cyworld, Facebook and Instagram have quickly become the most used social media services in Korea while other local services such as Band (owned by Naver) and KakaoStory (owned by Daum Kakao) also account for noticeable market shares (DMC Report, ‘Social Media Usage Analysis 2019’). These dynamics within Korea’s new media landscape make Naver an especially compelling case as it remains as the reigning platform giant despite the emergence of new platforms from elsewhere.
In order to examine how Naver maintains its leading position amidst the overarching
dominance of US-based platforms worldwide, this thesis specifically looks at the working of Naver in twofold; its techno-commercial developments and unique Korean (digital) culture. In chapter 1,
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Naver and its technical developments will be discussed in relation to the concepts in platform studies – platformisation and infrastructuralisation of platform (Plantin et al.). In doing so, it will be
demonstrated that the tendency of platforms to gain scale and indispensability through
infrastructuralisation of digital platform services is also evident in the non-Western context. By resituating Naver as a local platform, the notion of platform imperialism will be critically discussed. The chapter will also highlight that the existing studies on platforms which tend to primarily focus on technical aspects such as digital infrastructure and computational features (programmability; namely, API, SDK and OS) are inadequate to give a precise answer as to how and why Naver maintains its dominant position in South Korea. This is largely due to the fact that its US
counterparts are equally equipped with these techno-commercial tools which are purported to be crucial elements in the process of platformisation.
For this reason, this thesis departs from the existing discourse in platform studies and turns to examining the cultural aspects of platforms and exploring the extent to which (digital) culture is embedded in the construct of Naver. In examining the interface of Naver’s Search Results as a manifestation of the platform’s curation algorithms, Chapter 2 and 3 will take spatiality as a window to demonstrate the interplay between culture and the working of platforms. In chapter 2, the culture of Bang (Room in English), a unique Korean notion of forming spatiality will be contextualised in relation to the search result curations on Naver. In doing so, it will suggest that incorporation of cultural aspects – the unique ‘Koreanness’ embedded in Naver – into the platform discourse may provide insight as to how an alternative platform in the non-Western context sustains its dominance amid the U.S. dominated new media landscape. Chapter 3 focuses on demonstrating how differently space is imagined on Naver and Google. Looking at search results for various locations in Korea in relation to a unique cultural context; the complex idea of place-searching as a Korean digital practice, the chapter will illustrate that Naver is shaping the digital culture unique to Korea. The final chapter will present a conclusive discussion on remapping out the geo-politics and argue that platforms need to be understood in relation to cultural aspects in addition to its techno-commercial features. In other words, this thesis will argue that culture is another core aspect through which platformisation
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Chapter 1
1.1 Platform and its platformising power
Exploring the concept of platform is important in order to understand the process through which GAFAM dominates the role in mediating and governing the majority of data flow on a global scale. In doing so, it also allows to delineate the political economic and social-cultural implications that the platforms exert in multifaceted aspects of everyday life practice. In outlining the developments of platform concepts, Poell et al, point out that the notion of platform has undergone several shifts in its definitions as the term has been studied and developed through multiple disciplines including
economics, communication studies, software studies and political science (4–5). Such broad academic developments across disciplines arguably substantiate the very expansion of scope and influence that digital platforms penetrate in the society. Drawing mostly from the perspectives of business schools as well as software studies which put emphases on multisided market and programmability, respectively, they define platform as “(re) programmable digital infrastructures that facilitate and shape personalised interaction among end-users and complementors, organised through the systematic collection, algorithmic processing, monetisation and circulation of data”(3). The notion of multisided market here is crucial for our understanding of Naver’s success within the market dynamics in South Korea. In the context of new media studies, Rieder and Sire highlight the dynamics that platform companies construct in relation to the different type of actors/constituencies within the digital ecosystem. Referring to the market structure as multi-sided, they point out that digital platforms form a market model that brings “at least two distinct groups of end-users” into its ecosystem (199). By enabling and mediating economically effective interactions – namely, incentives for each side to join the platforms – between each side, they argue that platforms ensure that all sides (actors) are on board. The extent to which platforms subsidise each side, according to Rieder and Sire, is crucial in order to outstand and thrive in the fierce competition among platforms. In other words, having a well-balanced economy of incentives across all sides will ensure that all of platform constituencies will take part in the platform ecosystem for externalities on the others, while the platform can gain significant network effects which can be translated into revenues. For Naver, this may mean that the unique “Koreanness” embedded in the working of Naver (which will be delineated later in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3) is one of crucial externalities on which its actors – content creators, advertisers, end-users and so on – choose to join the ecosystem, creating a network
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effect that outstands its counterparts (as acknowledged mostly from the US) in terms of its market share.
Similarly, in contextualising an increasing extent to which digital platforms play a role in reshaping and affecting economic, cultural and political structures of the society, van Dijck et al. elaborate that platforms not only mediate the interactions between end-users but also heavily intervene the socio-political and economical transactions of corporate entities and public bodies (4). For them, platforms are distinguished into two types; platforms and sectoral platforms.
Infrastructural platforms refer to online services such as search engines, maps, instant messaging, advertising networks and pay systems where platforms often act as “online gatekeepers”, managing, storing and channelling data flows accomplished through other smaller platforms or apps built on top of infrastructural platforms. Sectoral platforms provide services in more specific sectors such as news, hospitality, transportation and retail, often projecting themselves as mere connectors. While van Dijck et al. assert that infrastructural platforms, through their capabilities to connect substantial amount of data, wield “unprecedented power” over sectoral platforms, they also emphasise that the two types should not be considered as fixed categories but rather, interchangeable dynamics that platforms strategically take on (13–17). This means that an infrastructural platform may thus serve as a host for other platforms of smaller companies while having its own sectoral platforms within its infrastructural ecosystem. By doing so, a few of tech giants have established themselves in the centre of the new media landscape; their services increasingly act as the nucleus to the overall architecture of the platform ecosystem and distribution of data flows. In the case of Naver, for instance, a similar dynamic can be observed in the way in which Naver Pay, an example of Naver’s infrastructural platform, operates within its ecosystem as well as in relation to other smaller external platforms. As further elaborated later in this chapter, Naver Pay not only works as an infrastructural ecosystem for other in-house sectoral platforms including Naver Booking and Naver Shopping but also acts as a crucial hub that facilitates integrations of external platforms such as banking platforms into Naver’s ecosystem.
More recently, Plantin et al. have conceptualised an increasing shift in the way platforms construct themselves amidst the growing dependence of various socio-cultural, economic and political sectors on the ecosystems. Highlighting the need for a cross-articulated perspective that takes both infrastructure studies and platform studies into account in mapping the current new media ecosystem, they point out that platforms are increasingly becoming infrastructuralised, gaining
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capacities of infrastructures that are previously deemed as public values managed by the government; scale and indispensability. Historically contextualising the Web as an infrastructure, they argue that the immense reach and data accumulation of digital platforms such as Facebook led to a shift away from the Open Web and increasingly “lock in” their platform constituencies under their techno-commercial governance (303). The infrastructuralisation of platform, as Plantin et al. argue, is accomplished through the very programmability that platforms afford for developers and users. For example, Facebook APIs (which they figuratively compare to electrical sockets) facilitate other systems to seamlessly interact and exchange data with and within Facebook while it directs the flow of data inwards; as privately operating APIs create restrictions on the extent to which the data can be used and accessed, connected constituencies (developers, users, private/public sectors and
advertisers) on the APIs are increasing placed into a “walled garden” network constructed around commercial interests of platforms, away from the Open Web architecture (303). As a wide range of fields in everyday lives such as hospitality, public organisation, education and transport are
increasingly plugged into platform’s advanced communication networks and digital infrastructural tools as a means to reach the wider spectrum of end-users, the transcending leverage of digital platforms no longer limits itself to the technological and economic power relations solely within the digital landscape. Rather, considering the sheer amount of influence in data accumulation and
processing accomplished through infrastructural and sectoral platforms, tech giants are reshaping the power distribution between online and offline within social, cultural and political contexts (Plantin and Punathambekar).
Such process whereby platforms are penetrating their influence and governance into various aspects of everyday lives has been conceptualised as platformisation (Helmond). More precisely, Poell et al. define this evolving process as “the penetration of the infrastructures, economic processes and governmental frameworks of platforms in different economic sectors and spheres of life and […] the reorganisation of cultural practices and imaginations around platform” (5–6). The manifestation of platformisation has been studied in various aspects (Helmond; Casilli and Posada; Jin and Park; Nieborg and Helmond). While most of studies on platformisation tend to focus on delineating the increasing degree of governmentality and power of platforms, it is worth, particularly for this thesis, to understand the effort in elaborating the ongoing platformisation of cultural commodities; how the modification in formats and distribution of cultural commodities are increasingly becoming
contingent on platform logics. Highlighting the platform affordance to develop technical and economic standards through which contributing cultural productions – news, in their example –
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become increasingly dependent on platform mechanisms and thus become ‘platformised’, Nieborg and Poell underline the increasing platform power and its ramification on the way in which “historical, cultural and political values and sensitivities” crucial to the news media outlets are reshaped and governed by algorithmic curations and data commodification strategies of digital corporates (11). Such tendency is, indeed, not merely limited to news; gig workers (Uber drivers, Airbnb hosts and so on) as well as other traditional cultural productions including TV, film and music are increasingly optimising their activities for the working of platform logics for platform architectures are central to their monetisation process (Bonini and Gandini). It should be noted that, considering the aforementioned staggering market shares of these platform giants, mostly from US, this process is unfolding on a global scale.
1.2 Revisiting Platform Imperialism
It is important to note that the very scale and indispensability which US platform giants acquire from infrastructralising their services have geopolitical ramifications on how the access to data (hence capital) is governed, resulting in an imperialistic platform power relation on a global scale. While one might argue that such omnipresence of US platform services across industrial sectors and countries establishes seamless connections to each constituting actor online and offline, many scholars including Kwet raise concerns towards the burgeoning economic and socio-political power of these companies outside of the US for they are essentially private businesses with the focus on profit maximisation. Looking specifically at the way in which the force of US platform giants unfolds in the global south, Kwet highlights on three forms of domination that these companies enforce; economic-, digital infrastructural- and data surveillance domination. Through the example of Google and
Facebook which take 88% of local online advertising revenues in South Africa, Kwet asserts that the US tech giants gain monopolistic power over their economy while they intensify “technological dependencies [of local markets] that will lead to perpetual resource extraction” (4-5). In other worlds, the economic domination led by these companies leaves no room for local development of socio-economic and cultural exchanges. He goes on to argue that the infrastructural domination of these American companies in the form of hardware, software and network connectivity results in monopolistic accumulation of revenue generated from rent (copyright and access to infrastructure) and data extraction. In the context of South Africa, such control over infrastructure and the digital
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protection on intellectual property in favour of profit making, as Kwet argues, have a conflicting impact on social justice as the blockage of free access to digital technology “impoverishes poor people’s ability to obtain knowledge and culture”(8). In addition, he posits that, despite being a free service, Free Basics by Facebook, a limited internet service for developing markets, conditions the foreign private company as the internet gatekeeper of the poor, channelling information and knowledge by its platform logics. By the same token, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in 2016 has banned Free Basics based on the decision that it puts the principles of net neutrality at stake and that consumers should be ensured to unhindered and non-discriminatory access to the internet (Vincent). Furthermore, the unequal concentration of access and control of the internet by the US platform giants has an impact beyond a socio-economic level. As these companies accumulate a vast volume of data from end-users as well as government agencies, Kwet emphasises that developing countries are increasingly under a threat of targeted surveillance programs
implemented by US intelligence communities such as National Security Agency (NSA) that collects sensitive data in partnership with these private companies (10–11).
Such asymmetrical relationships of interdependence in political culture and platform technologies between the US and the rest of the world have been conceptualised as platform
imperialism (Jin 12). By examining various ways in which US established the free flow of information norm required for the construct of platform ecosystem on a global scale - digital infrastructure, intellectual properties and the role of nation-states (US government, in particular), Jin highlights the overarching amount of political economic power US platforms have consolidated in the digital age. In doing so, Jin posits that the global digital divide has intensified and faced a new paradigm; from internet divide to platform divide between the US and the rest. He goes on to assert that the new form of divide is increasingly putting “democracy, diversity and good governance” carried out by information and knowledge at stake, leaving no room for the growth of a local platform (Jin 155). Defining platform imperialism as a renewed form of American imperialism whereby the lopsided power relations have been constructed primarily through the exportation of cultural goods and related services, the new phenomena, he argues, entails a greater capital accumulation and thus, an expansion of power which affects all aspects including culture, economy and politics. Taking this geopolitical aspect into consideration, the “unprecedented power” which van Dijck et al. point out in mapping out the dynamics constructed by infrastructural platforms (mostly from the US) in relation to platform complementors as well as sectoral platforms is, to a great degree, not merely unfolding on a local scale or a nation-state level (16). As the roles of platforms increasingly extend to (digital)
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infrastructures with borderless scale and indispensability (Plantin et al.), infrastructural (and, to a certain degree, sectoral) platforms exert an imperialistic power on a global scale, managing and gatekeeping the flows and access of data outside the US.
While it is evidently true that the dominance of US platforms in the global market results in an unbalanced accumulation of data (hence capital), Steinberg attempts to illustrate the dynamics within the current global platform ecosystem which are more complex than what Jin envisioned through the concept of platform imperialism. Looking specifically at the recent developments of East Asian messenger apps; Line (a Japanese subsidiary of Naver), Kakaotalk (from another Korean platform, Daum Kakao) and WeChat (Tencent), Steinberg notes from his examples that each of these messengers is increasingly evolving into “an incipient megaplatform”, away from the dominance of US platform politics, as they continue to build “self-contained systems” within the messenger apps such as payment system, in-app game and space for social media activities (The Platform Economy 232). In other words, messenger users do not need to download these built-in features separately from the app stores. Although Google (Android OS) and Apple (iOS) maintain their central roles as “political economic configurations”, hosting and regulating developers’ apps (in this case, messenger apps) and collecting user metadata (Spreeuwenberg and Poell 7), Steinberg argues that these messengers, through “platformisation and portalisation” may become “the site of accumulated value creation rather than Google and Apple” (232). As Steinberg explores pre-platform productions across East Asia which came before the Silicon Valley-led platform era, he asserts that the concept of platform imperialism should be revisited through historical and geographical lens.
Likewise, the historical exploration of a rather peculiar Korean new media landscape – its early ICT developments and penetrations in 1990s paving ways for the developments and dominance of locally contextualised internet services over globally leading foreign (mostly US) services – may also demonstrate that the concept of platform imperialism oversimplifies the complex relations of geopolitical new media landscape while putting an overemphasis on the digital infrastructure from the US. Taking platform theories mentioned above into consideration, the technical evolutions of Naver from a portal to a platform exemplifies that the notion of platform divide which, as Jin argues, hinders the emergence of a regional platform needs to be explored in a broader geo-cultural context. Jin briefly mentions Naver as a unique case that has arisen to compete with Western dominant platforms. He, however, downplays Naver as a mere portal where users “enjoy several apps including mobile games, weather and news” rather than a search engine (59 and 70). In contrast to his
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perspective, I would argue that Naver has evolved into a non-Western alternative platform that is gradually expanding to a digital infrastructure. The exploration of the South Korean internet service’s business developments through the concepts of platform studies highlighted earlier in the chapter illustrates that Naver should be understood and conceptualised as a digital platform. As Naver continues to expand its business by launching various services which not only incentivise and invite external actors – advertisers, cultural productions, developers and end-users – but also further solidifies the influence of existing internal services, it formed a multi-sided platform ecosystem. In other words, Naver’s information exchange structure is no longer of a web portal whereby the main purpose is to “bring the vast information and service resources available from many sources to many users in an effective manner”. Rather, through infrastructural and sectoral platforms of Naver, it constitutes a platform structure with its goal to ensure a wider range of constituencies is involved in creating information exchange opportunities within Naver’s digital infrastructure.
Indeed, Naver has started its service as a web portal in 1999 and has ever since been referred to as the biggest portal in Korea. Over the years, however, along with its business expansion to other internet-based services including Naver Map, Naver Cloud and Naver Blog, the company has successfully resituated itself to a digital platform. More recently, the business expansion into e-commerce alongside its existing infrastructural platforms such as Naver Map resonates with what Plantin and Punathambekar refer to as infrastructuralisation of platforms. The introductions to digital infrastructural tools such as Naver OpenAPI and Naver Pay SDK have played a crucial role in facilitating integrations or “lock-in” effects with its extended platform constituencies (Plantin et al. 303).
The launch of Naver Pay in 2015, in particular, led to overarching impacts on the dynamics of its third parties as well as integrations of other pre-existing Naver platforms as a whole. Along with its online shopping service (Naver Shopping) as well as a large number of e-commerce websites rapidly opting for Naver as a social login, the service rapidly became the largest e-commerce payment system in Korea with 18 major Korean banks and nine credit card companies currently affiliated (Jimin Kim). Naver Booking, a sectoral platform under Naver Map has also been further integrated into the platform’s ecosystem as the payment service allows businesses (registered on Naver’s geolocation service) to monetize customer bookings directly from Naver Pay (Naver Booking). In addition, Naver Pay, in collaboration with two of the biggest credit card companies in the country, also launched its own physical credit cards, extending the use boundary of e-commerce to offline
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shopping. The company’s efforts in further ‘infrastructuralising’ their services are ongoing; the platform company recently announced that it will be expanding its business scope into traditional financing including stock market, insurance and loans through affiliated banks and financial
corporations, bypassing licenses required for internet-only banking and financing (Naver Financial). In this regard, such infrastructure projects not only increase indispensability of Naver as a digital platform at the user level but also reframes the company as an indispensable player that platformises “multiple social and economic sectors” beyond the digital culture (Plantin and Punathambekar 164).
Looking closely at such technical developments of the Korean platform clearly shows that there is a geographical diversity within the larger platform ecosystem. This is in contrast with Jin’s argument that there is no room for an alternative platform in the era of the renewed imperialism. It is also important to note that, as Naver established a matured platform ecosystem hosting its own platforms as well as external platforms, the extent to which Naver holds in terms of platform influence is beyond Steinberg’s notion of “incipient megaplatform” which he delineates through examples of app-based East Asian platforms. In addition, the developments of Naver also evidence that the platform in the non-Western context, too, expands its dominance through the internal infrastructuralisation of its platform ecosystem. Indeed, the existing case study on WeChat in China as a particular example of a non-Anglocentric context has showed a similar tendency. As Plantin and Seta argue, the market dominance of WeChat in China is accomplished in a similar manner; through first adjusting its system to a platform model and then further transforming its platform ecosystem into a digital infrastructure. It is, however, important to draw a clear distinction between WeChat and Naver for the market conditions through which these two non-US platforms operate are radically different. As briefly underlined earlier, the market dominance of Naver has not been established through government’s techno-nationalistic interventions and policy setting, imposing blockages on foreign platform companies1 as is in the case for China (Plantin and Seta). The free
market economy wherein Naver operates, therefore, calls for a question; how does the platform maintain its dominant position in Korea amid the fierce competition against (mostly) US platforms?
As demonstrated above, the current discourse on platform studies – how platforms
increasingly gain infrastructural capacities, platfomising economic, political and cultural aspects of the society – provides a useful insight for understanding the way Naver expands its dominance and
1 Line, Naver’s messaging platform has been blocked in 2016 and the access to Naver and DaumKakao (another
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penetrates its influence into everyday life practice of Korean users. I would argue that the existing studies on the architecture of platforms (Nieborg and Helmond; Langlois and Elmer; Plantin et al.; Nieborg and Poell) which tend to primarily focus on technical aspects such as digital infrastructure and computational features (programmability; namely, API, SDK and OS) are, however, inadequate to give a precise answer as to how Naver sustains its dominant position in the competitive market environment. This is largely because its Western counterparts present in the market are equally geared with these techno-commercial features. For this reason, I would argue that the construct of the platform needs to be understood through cultural aspects. As Poell et al. rightfully noted, there is a notable lack of studies looking into cultural aspects through the lens of platform concepts.
Particularly, when discussing the emergence and establishment of platforms as such (rather than their mere existence), the role of culture is paramount. There are some scholars working in the broader stream of cultural studies examining, on one hand, how cultural practices are platformised and, on the other hand, how institutional changes on platforms are achieved by cultural practices (5). There has been, however, no study that has taken culture into consideration when understanding the construction of platforms. In other words, probing into a unique sociocultural element that I refer to as ‘Koreanness’ embedded into the working of Naver may provide an insight as to how a dominant local platform can sustain, further platformising socio-cultural, economic and political aspects of everyday life in a local context.
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Chapter 2
2.1 Interface: beyond governance
As demonstrated in the previous chapter, the techno-commercial developments of Naver – from a portal to a digital platform with an infrastructural power – clearly confirm that the tendency of platforms’ infrastructuralisation is also apparent in a non-Western context, inviting (hence, platformising) further economic and socio-cultural sectors such as financing and retailers through the expanding programmability. Naver has its head start in entering the sector which Google has yet to expand: the local e-commerce (and m-commerce) market which is one of the biggest in the world (Statista Research Department). As highlighted in Chapter 1, the success and further integration of Naver Pay have played a crucial role in infrastructuralising the platform, connecting end-users with various retailers via online payments (Naver Pay SDK and Social Longin) as well as physical/offline payments (Naver-affiliated creditcards). This alone, however, does not do justice to explaining why a significantly larger number of users chooses Naver over Google; shopping remains rather as a minor feature for the platforms. On three of the biggest internet platforms in Korea (Naver, Daumkakao and Google), search is the most frequently used feature (72.4%) followed by news consumption (66.1%), email (42.5%), blog (30%), and shopping (29.3%)(DMC Report, 2018 Online Consumer Report 7). This raises a questions; if search is the function that users most frequently use, what is it that makes Naver Search more preferable than that of Google? In order to answer the question, this chapter closely interrogates the working of Naver Search and compares with Google on an interface level. Amongst many other platforms Naver and Google mediate, this thesis looks specifically into the comparisons between Naver Search and Google Search because 1) search is the most frequently used feature as shown above, 2) both companies started their business with search portals and, most importantly, 3) their search platforms serve as a main source for advertising revenue generations as well as a crucial hub onto which internal and external platforms are integrated (programmed).
While the complex array of computational elements such as sectoral/infrastructural platforms, APIs, SDKs, and OS have been scrutinised in relation to the construction of platforms (Helmond; Spreeuwenberg and Poell; Edelman and Geradin), the discussion on the role of interface as a cultural reflection has been largely limited when it comes to understanding the working of platforms and the way in which platformisation unfolds on an interface level. Indeed, interfaces have
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been studied through the perspective of political economy; as one of platforms’ governing
instruments (Poell et al.). Platforms afford, facilitate and mediate interactions of end-users with each other as well as other platform constituencies in limited ways designed by the platforms; through clickable graphical user interfaces (GUIs) such as like, share, post and follow which are stored, patternised and analysed as valuable metrics for construction of (sorting) algorithms (Bucher and Helmond). In outlining the historical context behind the production of the GUI which emerged along with the popularisation of personal computers and the process of making machine language protocols a black box, Shah asserts that the GUI has made the computers opaquely transparent, making “the normative nature of pre-programmed algorithms, the restricted variables that
determined the stable state of the compute and the controlled nature of code” invisible and allowing users to “initiate a pretend conversation with the computer”(185). In this context, he asserts that the interface should not be overlooked and taken for granted merely as descriptions or design aesthetics that solely exist to visualise the digitalisation. Rather, he posits that the production of interface in digitisation should be understood as “the site for political contestation and manipulation”(193), serving as a means for power institutions and brokers (in another word, platforms) to organise, control, govern and manipulate the users to an extent that the interface forces users to become accessible. Similarly, noting on the way in which recursive feedback loops and algorithmic
construction materialise through the GUI, Yeung highlights the growing degree of platform power in which the “choice architect” (in other words, platforms that are geared with an immense volume of user data and in-house algorithms) plays a predominant role in channelling user choices.
Conceptualising the techniques as hypernudge, she asserts that platforms, through constantly and unobtrusively altering algorithmically-driven curations of the contents, confer priming effects onto particular contents (whether they be paid contents or algorithmically suggested
contents),“dynamically configuring the user’s information choice context in ways intentionally designed to influence her decisions” (Yeung 122).
As Ash et al. remind us, it is, however, important to note that interface is not merely a computational instrument through which power and manipulation against the users are exerted in a dogmatic manner. Delineating how power operates, Ash et al. emphasise that the actual practice of interface design is an experimental process where constant modulations are executed through exchanges between users and interface designers (3–6). Focusing on the flexible and adaptive nature of designing digital interface suggests that the digital object is, in fact, a product of a mediated process led by social constructs. These include user feedbacks, contestations and failures, all of which
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are accumulated from the interactions between the users and the designers and, as Ash et al. argue, they are primary elements which facilitate and shape constant modulations of the interface. This is in a stark contrast to the perspectives discussed earlier through Shah and Yeung; digital interface as devices for top down control and manipulation. Shifting away from the notion that users in digitisation are mere passive subjects to normative manipulations of the choice architect or a platform allows for a broader interpretation of interfaces; sociocultural aspects that are embedded into “different mediatic layers within the nested system” (Galloway 31). By the same token, Light et al. emphasise the need to explore “the computational technologies as sociocultural artefacts” for data outputs and technological features are constructed with social and cultural representations (885). Combining science and technology studies (STS) with cultural studies approaches in deconstructing and interpreting the cultural discourses of technologies, they propose the walkthrough method as a combined approach to explore and comprehend the technologies through socio-cultural context. The method meticulously examines the working of a digital object – user interface arrangement, function, feature, textual content and so on – as the researcher mimics and observes everyday use of the object. In doing so, it provides a means to closely engage with the “technological mechanisms and embedded cultural references” and examine how these cultural values are, in turn, reinforced by the use of the object (882-887). By looking at how these blackboxed techno-commercial layers such as algorithms and APIs are interfaced together, the walkthrough method, therefore, shows how cultural context is embedded into the construct of platforms. It is also important to note that, according to the
consumer report conducted by DMC, user interface (UI) is found to be the foremost important aspect (58.7%) which Korean users consider when it comes to choosing the internet platform, followed by diversity of contents and services (45.9%) and speed of services (40.3%) (DMC Report, 2018 Online Consumer Report 10). A close exploration of Naver’s interface with a focus on
contextualising its embedded cultural attributes, therefore, provides an insight as to how the alternative platform in a non-Western context sustains its dominance.
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2.2 What is Korean about Naver?
Image 1. Search Results of 'rationed facemask' on Google Image 2. Search Results of 'rationed facemask' on Naver
Unlike Google which acts as an algorithms-based website aggregator, Naver acts
predominantly as an algorithms-powered content aggregator, managing multiple sub-categories (which I have previously conceptualised as infrastructural and sectoral platforms) where end-users as well as platform complementors can upload and search for various contents within the platform’s ecosystem. As a content aggregator, curating the order of platforms in the search results that will be considered the most useful is as equally important as ranking the most relevant content (within the
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platforms) for Naver. The Naver algorithmic curations, therefore, work significantly different to Google’s. Whereas Google search curations focus heavily on matching the most relevant websites that will result in (re)directing a user outside of Google, Naver curates the most relevant content within the most relevant Naver platform, keeping the user locked into its own ecosystem while browsing (see Image 1. and Image 2.).
As shown in Image 1., search results of the same search query – rationed facemask2 – clearly
demonstrate how content arrangements differ between Naver and Google. The majority of retrieved search results on Google focuses on ranking/presenting a curated list of external websites which the platform deems relevant along with a marginal volume of contents displayed through Google’s other platforms; Google Image and Google News. While Google uses structured data and metadata of external websites in presenting the contents through their own platforms, these two integrated platforms in the example, too, serve as website aggregators; clicking on a news on Google News will direct the user to a media outlet’s website. As for Google Image, while the user can browse images across various websites within the platform, the service still aggregates and draws its sources from external websites. As a result, the user on Google is likely to be redirected to an external website in order to access whatever information that one is seeking.
In a sharp contrast, Naver’s Search algorithms predominantly foreground contents uploaded within the array of its platform ecosystem that the platform deems relevant (Image 2.). Notably, results of external websites occupy an insignificant share, appearing in the bottom of the scroll depth. The example search query presents search results consisting of six Naver platforms – Naver Place (a derivative of Naver Maps), Naver News, Naver Blog/View, Naver Shopping, Naver Knowledge iN, Naver Realtime – and three Naver Search advanced features – two appearances of Related Keywords and Trending News Topics. All of results hosted under these six Naver platforms direct the user inwards; clicking on a result does not lead to opening a new tab or leaving the platform. The information/content is still provided within Naver ecosystem and the user flow in between; moving from search results to a selected content is seamless – the platform keeps the user’s login status, facilitating smooth transitions and integrations for another platform with minimum friction. For
2 In order to prevent supply shortage on highly protective facemasks which has been one of the preventative
measures against COVID-19, the South Korean government created a system for rationed facemasks that are supplied and distributed via public channels on top of facemasks that are available in the market. The sales of rationed facemasks are capped to two per person and they are sold on the odd-even rule basis – customers born on odd days can purchase rationed facemasks on odd days and vice-versa (M.-K. Jung). Real-time quantity of rationed masks available at each pharmacy is shown on Naver Maps (Image 2.).
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example, a logged-in Naver user would click on a search result under Naver News and directly comment on the article and, similarly, s/he would click on a Naver Blog post in the search results, liking and commenting on the post without having to sign up or create a one-time username. In the case of search results under Naver Shopping, the user can see a product uploaded by a Naver Shopping seller (ranging from small to retail giants) and purchase the item using his/her Naver Pay credentials without having to exit the platform and create an account for each seller. Throughout these transitions from a list of search results to a selected result, Naver presents its interface aesthetics consistently – its brand colour palette: light green and white; in-house font, Nanum Square, and Naver platform logos which constantly invite and keep the user back in the loop of the platform ecosystem (Image 3.).
Image 3. Examples of Naver’s interface aesthetics
The consistency of these interface aesthetics and user flow intensifies further especially on its mobile app which boasts double amount of daily users than PC and mobile browser versions
combined (Kang). Naver’s mobile app works rather as a stand-alone browser, meaning that the search engine (and its other platforms that may be prompted during the use) are not run on top of Safari or Google Chrome and will work seamlessly within the app without being forced to move to another app/browser page. Naver’s mobile app adds a native toolbar which hovers on the bottom throughout the usage (Image 4.), providing its own tools and interfaces for web-browsing – Naver
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Home, backward, forward, refresh, share, Keep (bookmark on Naver), Green Dot3 which the
company describes as “Naver’s new design identity” and so on (S. Y. Choi). These native toolbars and distinctive features developed by Naver serve important functions for the mobile app to replace other existing browsers. For example, if a user bookmarks a Naver Blog post on the mobile app, the data will be saved to Naver’s native bookmark folder rather than a third party browser’s bookmark folders. In other others, the hovering native toolbars and features exclusively available on Naver’s mobile app eliminate the needs for users to move to mobile browsers, namely Google Chrome or Safari whose default search engine is set to Google. As these additional browsing tool and interfaces are modified and optimised for the operation of Naver, it, therefore, not only creates a seamless user flow
aesthetically but also systematically invites users back into the loop of its ecosystem along with the inward search algorithm logics previously discussed.
Image 4. Native toolbar on Naver's mobile app
3 First introduced in 2018, Green Dot is a newer interface that acts as an additional interactive search bar for
advanced search methods such as voice search, music search and Smart Lens search (S. Y. Choi). It also hosts customisable shortcuts to Naver platforms.
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2.3 Reading Naver’s algorithms as a sociocultural artefact
Naver’s algorithmic logics as well as accompanying interfaces can be seen merely as the company’s technical strategy to maintain its position as a dominant South Korean platform; providing a
seamless information distribution and browsing experience without redirecting users to a new tab (a non-Naver website/platform). I, however, argue that the algorithms of Naver Search can also be understood as a sociocultural artefact that is reflective of distinctive Korean (digital) culture. In critically interrogating the tools of computer engineering through an anthropological approach, Seaver suggests that algorithms should be seen as “diffused sociotechnical systems” rather than “procedural formula[s]” (Seaver, ‘Algorithms as Culture’ 5) which, as he argues, is a definition often used by technologists and advocates to detach and neglect algorithmic processes from cultural perspectives. Highlighting the dire need in understanding algorithms through cultural perspectives, he emphasises an approach which he refers to as “algorithms as culture”, asserting that the
algorithms should be understood as unstable and dynamic collections of human practices through which we can observe embedded cultural ideas (Seaver, ‘Algorithms as Culture’; Todd). Taking his approach into consideration, a closer look on the algorithmic arrangements of Naver’s platforms under which search results are retrieved suggests an interesting cultural context.
As shown in image.5, each search query on Naver (and its context) defines the
orders/arrangements of platforms in the search results. For example, the search word ‘Dogok Station’ returns results related to places first; localised real-time subway information (arrivals, working hours, station facilities and so on) retrieved from Naver Maps, recommended nearby restaurants and cafes on Naver Place as well as Naver Maps and restaurant/café reviews on Naver Blog. The search results for ‘2020 South Korean legislative election (415 Chong-Sun in Korean)’ are significantly different in terms of the platform arrangements; an infographic on the election results including voter turnout and seats by party is shown on top followed by related posts on Naver Blog, Naver News and Naver Knowledge In. The search query ‘BTS’, a K-Pop boyband would return popular clips from V Live, a Naver-owned live video streaming service that focuses on global digital broadcasting of K-Pop related contents followed by their profiles, one-line tweet from their official Twitter account, clips from Naver TV and V Live, discography, a timeline feed of their V Live account and so on.
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Image 5. Platform layouts for search queries (from left); ‘Dogok Station’, ‘2020 South Korean legislative election’ and ‘BTS’
Such flexibility within the space of search results which materialises through its algorithms can be contextualised with the unique concept of spatiality in Korean culture; Bang [방]. Roughly translated as room in English, Bang represents the Korean way of constructing a social space which, as Choi argues, is fundamentally different to the Western concept of room. Whereas a room in Western cultures is a pre-provision space with a specific purpose, Bang is not a pre-determined space. Rather, it is an undefined multifunctional space which later transmutes into “a context-specific place according to the occupant’s will” (J. Choi 190). From a traditional sense of bang where a living room often metamorphosed into a dining room, study room and bedroom all at the same time, the concept of bang has evolved to persist in the form of commercial spaces in the contemporary society along with the exponential velocity of urbanisation that Seoul has undergone in the early 1990s. The government’s plan to build 2 million new homes in the form of apartments (APT) in the Seoul metropolitan area within just four years has not only exceeded its goal but also given a birth to a new
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architectural type for commercial venues which are still prevalent up to this day; Keunrin Senghwal Shiseol [근린생활시설], Keunseng [근생] for short.
Image 6. Examples of keunseng built in the early 1990s (Jersuji)
Keunseng, typically a 3-8 storey building (Image. 6), quickly and rather haphazardly became the most common type of commercial building in Seoul (and later in all Korean cities) as the then destitute government allotted the developments of surplus areas between large scale apartment complexes to the private sector for commercial buildings. Created as a rental building divided into many cells typically ranging from 130 m2 to 330 m2 with its aim for maximum efficiency (capabilities to accommodate as many small businesses) and adaptability (Kwangsoo Kim; S. Lee), keunseng clearly reflects the concept of Bang. The highly flexible and agile building is not constructed with any predetermined purposes. Rather, it is built for the ever-changing programs that later define the purpose of each space within the building.
“The builders [of Keunseng] usually do not know or care about the location and/or
surrounding area where the building would be built, nor the program and facilities that will eventually use that space. Designing without knowing the eventual end product precludes even the intention to make the content and form coincide. The instability of the program continues after the building is constructed […] the greatest advantage of this type of construction is the adaptability it shows to any post-completion changes.”
(Kwangsoo Kim 12–13)
As keunseng is adaptable to any type of urban programs ranging from private afterschool academies to entertainment venues to religious institutions, this urban multi-story grid frame
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building in Korea typically shows a peculiar mixture of programs such as restaurants, convenience store, dentist, church and massage parlour are all rented in the same building. The mixture is subjected to a constant change as some businesses close down and other programs are added to the building over time, making its own bang. These buildings are also home to many unique Korean modern cultural phenomena such as PC Bang (PC café), Norae Bang (Karaoke), DVD Bang and Jimjil bang (a large leisure-multiplex consisting of multiple sauna and spa rooms, sleeping rooms, PC bang, playground and snack bar), all of which embody this unique construction of spatiality.
Highlighting that the architectural type of keunseng is developed so that “there is no obstacle to any changes being made” within the building, K. Kim suggests keunseng can also be seen closer to an “infrastructure rather than an architectural construction” (13). Interestingly, the adaptability to metamorphosis is also a crucial aspect which makes Naver an infrastructuralised platform where users are constantly directed inwards and locked into its ecosystem through curations of contents uploaded across Naver platforms. Image. 5 clearly demonstrates the vast extent to which the company’s infrastructural and sectoral platforms are integrated into the search results. From a geo-specific query such as ‘Dogok Station’ to a recent political event (‘2020 South Korean legislative election’) to a musician (‘BTS’), Naver prioritises and curates different sets of its platforms according to what its algorithms deem most relevant. As previously highlighted in Chapter 1, both types of platforms – infrastructural and sectoral – are not rigid categories. Rather, they are flexible dynamics which can accommodate or ‘plug in’ external (third party) platforms as well as internal platforms under its ecosystem. By the same token, as shown through Image. 5, Naver Search acts as a
superstructure (infrastructural) platform, hosting integrations of internal (Naver-owned) platforms including Naver Music and Naver News (sectoral platforms) as well as Naver Maps (infrastructural platform). As the search algorithms constantly alter the orders of Naver platforms displayed on the search results, Naver Search, similar to the purpose of keunseng, is an (digital) infrastructure that is designed to encompass the modularity. Combined with the aforementioned nature of Naver as a content aggregator – its inclinations to keep the user within its ecosystem by prioritising Naver-owned contents, the modulating superstructure platform – Naver Search – reinforces its indispensability and expands its range of affordance.
With the example search queries I have highlighted in Image.5, I also argue that the bang culture can be technologically contextualised in relation to the working of algorithmic curations on Naver. In other words, Naver, as a local dominant platform, reflects this unique spatio-cultural
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concept in Korean culture. Seeing the modulating list of Naver platforms as bangs, it can be argued that the occupants (in this case, Naver users) determine the multifunctional space (search results) by their will (search query). While the scale and dispensability of Naver as an infrastructuralised
platform created “the tipping effect, successfully ensuring all actors (users, advertisers and cultural producers) are on board in the multi-sided platform market (Rieder and Sire), it can be argued that the unique Korean cultures that have been translated into the digital sphere and further embedded into Naver’s algorithms logics, to a certain extent, play a crucial role in allowing the platform to remain as the dominant non-Western alternative.
The correlation between physical space and digital space bound by the socio-technological developments and networks has been highlighted by Nissenbaum and Varnelis in their ‘call and response’ as they conceptualise the blurring of public and private dichotomy that manifests on social networks as well as urban architecture. They point out that the Net (digitised and digital space) should not be considered as a distant place from the physical but rather, “as a medium of activity and practice – action, transaction, interaction and communication – with connections and flows that thread from Net to other media and back, including the spaces constructed from the physical, built environment” (Nissenbaum and Varnelis 19). Emphasising the need for a perspective that looks at the relation between technology and socio-cultural values as a complex interplay wherein one affects the other rather than a mere one-way relation, they delineate how the shifting notion of privacy and a new culture of exposure manifest in both spaces in a parallel manner; online – information sharing and self-exposure practice – and physical space – contemporary architectural trend that sees the rise of highly transparent apartment buildings and hotels. As they have rightfully pointed out, it is important to refrain from cultural determinism; a perspective that looks at culture as the ultimate determinant of constructing and understanding our built environments in physical and digital architecture, for technology, too, shapes culture to a great degree. In examining how physical spatiality is contextualised and imagined on Naver Search, the next chapter will delineate how the local alternative platform creates a digital culture unique to Korea as it platformises socio-cultural and economic aspects of everyday life in a local context.
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Chapter 3
3.1 Naver and Google: Two Different Contextualisers
As demonstrated through the search results comparison between two platforms highlighted in the previous chapter (image 1. and image 2.), the way Naver – as a content aggregator – and Google – as a website aggregator – process and curate search results are fundamentally different. Naver attempts to keep the users inward by presenting contents that exist within its infrastructuralised platform ecosystem such as Naver Blog, Naver News, Naver Shopping and so on, whereas Google focuses on directing the users to external websites which the platform deems the most relevant. A closer exploration into the search results show the different extent to which both platforms utilise
algorithms in order to interpret the context of search keywords and present the results accordingly. For both platforms, the algorithmic contextualisation plays a key role in understanding the search queries and presenting the search results. Naver does not publicly disclose how its algorithms operate in detail, as is often the case with most of algorithms-based platforms including Google (Bucher, ‘The Friendship Assemblage’ 484). The platform, however, states that a multiple set of in-house
algorithms including C-Rank and D.I.A (Deep Intent Analysis) is implemented to “utilise a wide range of collected data such as search logs and platform-owned database along with cybernetic mechanisms that interpret contexts, contents and chains (relevance of in-links and out-links)” to measure both credibility of creators and popularity of user search (Naver Official Blog, D.I.A. - Naver’s Latest Search Logic). Similarly, for Google, it claims that its algorithms tailor the results to “what is most useful and relevant in that moment” for the user by identifying “persistent user pain points” across a vast webpages and by utilising personal data such as Search history, Search Setting and user locations (Google’s Search Algorithm and Ranking System - Google Search).
Such algorithmic workings in Search on both platforms clearly resonate with what Seaver refers to as “context culture” whereby data inputs are increasingly analysed in order to
provide/recommend contextualised results (‘The Nice Thing about Context Is That Everyone Has It’ 1106). While both companies seemingly take the similar approach in understanding and curating the search queries – through the implementation of data-driven cybernetic contextualization – it should be noted that the ways in which the information (search results) is contextualized is drastically different as the very notion of context is “differently imagined and managed by different groups of
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people” (ibid., 1105). In arguing that the constructions of context themselves are contextually contingent, meaning that the contexts are interpreted in a multitude of ways, Seaver highlights the political role of “the contextualiser”, shaping the direction through which interactions are
contextualized (ibid). In other words, mundane online practices of the user can be utilized and interpreted differently depending on the contextualiser; a digital marketer may interpret the user data in an economic context – how the user interactions lead to online purchases – while an anthropologist may interpret the same data in relation to a cultural context – how an online
action/interaction of the user may affect the physical boundary of the user. Noting on the increasing implementation of context culture in big data-driven corporates, he also posits that the development of algorithmic contextualization powered by the use of data mining grants these companies “the power to impose and normalize certain modes of contextualization at the expense of others” (ibid). Such a perspective clearly resonates with Yeung’s concept of hypernudge discussed in chapter 1; the increasing role of choice architect (which I refer to as digital platform and, in Seaver’s term,
contextualiser) in shaping user’s choice context constructed in ways that would systematically intervene or influence human decision-making process (120). Taking this context into consideration, this chapter examines how the physical spatiality is differently imagined and contextualized between a global (US-based) platform – Google – and a local dominant platform – Naver. In doing so, it attempts to delineate the ramifications or, in Seaver’s term, normative power that the contextualiser has on creating and shaping a unique culture.
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3.2 Dogok Station as a
Space
and a
Place
: contextualising the physical spatiality in
Seoul
Image 7. Contextualisation Comparison: Search Results for ‘Dogok Station’ on Naver (left) and Google (right)
Looking closely into the comparison of search results for ‘Dogok Station’, a subway station in Seoul apparently shows how the spatiality is differently mapped out with different contexts. As shown in image 7, the contexts of the search results are drastically different on these two platforms. The search results on Naver prioritise highly localised subway information derived from Naver Maps including a short subway map of nearing stations, real-time arrivals, first and last subway, connecting public transport, locations of public toilet (whether it’s inside or outside of the terminal) and availability of
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in-station facilities including bike park, lactation room, luggage storage and so on. Similarly, Google retrieves subway information from Google Maps as the top result. The platform, however, focuses more on presenting the actual location of the station, foregrounding Google Maps ratings (of the station), an icon which links to Directions and a pinned map of the station. In comparison to Naver, the information on subway and other connecting transports on Google is significantly brief as it only shows a list of available transportation options. A structured data of the Wikipedia page on Dogok station, a short highlight of the Wikipedia page visualized by Google, follows; here, the information of the station rather than the information in the station is highlighted: establishment date, structure of platform, a total number of platforms and rails. Likewise, the ways in which these two platforms contextualise the spatiality of Dogok Station using its mapping platforms show a clear difference. Naver contextualises the station as a public facility to be used as a transportation method (to move to somewhere else) whereas Google sees the station as a geographical site to locate and get to. The comparison also clearly demonstrates the degree to each mapping service (or infrastructural
platform, rather) integrates with the public infrastructure of the city such as real-time data on public transports. Unlike Google which briefly lists available transportation options, Naver presents an extensive amount of real-time transportation data as well as detailed information inside the station which are derived from data available through Naver Maps. This goes to not only show that the contextualisation of the query for Naver is significantly more localised than that of Google but also to manifest the very scale and indispensability which Naver embodies as an infrastructuralised digital platform, bringing the access to physical infrastructures – public transports and public facilities – into its search platform.
It is worth acknowledging that the scope of Google Maps features is rudimentary in Korea due to a political economic reason. Mapping and navigation services are subjected to the Spatial Data Industry Promotion Act and the Promotion of Military Base and Installation Act which are enforced to constrain the export of the country’s map data as part of national security measures primarily against the potential hostility from North Korea. In order for online mapping and navigation services to be allowed access to the map data of South Korea, the spatial data must be stored in local servers (Fairchild and Badalge). As Google has stored its maps on foreign servers until very recently (in February 2020) the company launched a new data centre in Seoul, many of Google Maps services have been largely limited; depiction of streets and buildings on Google Street View is only available in low-resolution and navigation feature is partially available with low accuracy and outdated data. While one may argue that such a political economic context has inevitably curbed Google’s access to
