earticle

영어

The influence of internet media on the formation of public opinion has steadily increased in recent years. While the number of users of traditional news media in South Korea is decreasing, that of internet news media is rapidly increasing. This trend gave rise to a shift in the news ecosystem from a mass media-led society to one dominated by digital outlets. This shift resulted in more challenging and complex regulatory issues associated with press arbitration. One of the noticeable changes in the digital era is the entrance of various digital news outlets into the news distribution market. In this context, three research questions were identified. First, how has the diffusion of digital news media affected the current ecosystem of news production, distribution, and consumption? Second, what are the issues associated with the effectiveness of press arbitration in the newly emerged digital news ecosystem? Third, what kinds of policy suggestions can be made to better protect individuals’ reputations and privacy in the digital age? This study focuses on the concept of digital intermediaries, regarding them as a useful analytical tool to explain the recent dynamics of digital news distribution. This concept was also introduced to broaden the scope of press arbitration into the newly emerged news space in order to incorporate such entities as sites for news aggregation, news comment, social media, and a variety of news curation services. In addition, the press arbitration law must be revised to better protect individuals’ basic rights, which might otherwise be damaged by newly emerged digital news outlets including digital intermediaries. Along this line, this paper suggests that the press arbitration law include a clause addressing the right to erase false, erroneous, or irrelevant news reports. Arguing that internet space, in spite of its increasing importance for the formation of public opinion, has not been appropriately taken into account with regard to press arbitration, this study demands a more aggressive regulatory regime that will effectively reprieve innocent people whose basic rights were infringed by false or unethical news reports. However, it also points out that freedom of the press must not be threatened by this more aggressive regulatory system. The four modalities of law, norm, market, and architecture proposed by Lessig (1999) offer a useful guideline with which we can deepen our understanding of regulatory issues associated with press arbitration in the digital age. First, the present study suggests that the regulatory scope of press arbitration be expanded into the realm of different kinds of digital intermediaries exercising a certain level of influence in terms of share of news usage. Many complex issues related to measurement of the influence of each digital news outlet were not discussed because they go beyond the scope of this study. Third, emphasis upon the normative constraints regarding both journalistic professionalism and civic virtue of internet users was included as a policy option to diffuse the civic-oriented norm into cyberspace. Third, market-based institutions that measure individuals’ communicative performances in terms of civility were also proposed. Finally, the concept of architecture or code was included. Internet architecture designed to reduce uncivilized speech will alleviate the high cost associated with legal efforts to regulate online speech. Legal action such as revision of press arbitration law needs to be supplemented by other measures in the fields of norm, market, and architecture of technology.

한국어

디지털 미디어 기술의 진화로 인해 뉴스이용의 중심축이 전통적 대중매체에서 인터넷매체 영역으로 이동하고 있음이 더욱 확연하게 드러나고 있다. 이에 따라 뉴스로 인한 인격권 침해에 초점을 맞춘 언론피해구제 방안도 중대한 변화의 기로에 서게 되었다. 많은 곳에서 뉴스의 이용으로 인한 인격권 피해가 빈번하게 발생할 것이므로 역동적으로 변화하는 디지털 뉴스생태계의 특성을 고려하여 언론피해구제 방안을 재정비하는 작업이 매우 시급하고 중요한 당면과제로 떠올랐다. 변화무쌍하고 복잡다단한 디지털 뉴스생태계가 뉴스이용과 관련하여 발생하는 인격권 피해에 미치는 영향을 적극적으로 고려해야 할 상황이 도래했다고 하겠다. 이런 맥락에서 본 연구는 디지털 시대에 언론피해구제의 공백과 혼란을 초래하는 뉴스생태계의 특징과 쟁점을 파악하고, 이를 해결할 수 있는 법과 제도의 개선방향을 제시하고자 한다. 특히 여기서는 뉴스의 유통 및 소비의 중심축으로 등장한 디지털 뉴스중개자(Digital Intermediaries)가 초래한 피해구제 환경의 변화에 주목했으며, 인터넷 공간에서의 언론피해구제의 대상과 영역을 다양한 유형의 디지털 뉴스중개자로까지 확대할 것을 제안하고, 이와 관련된 언론피해구제 개선 방안의 방향에 대해 논의했다.