• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.55-95
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• 2008

This research was performed with the aim of analyzing the 'expectation dynamics' of embryonic stem cell research which was revealed throughout the establishment process of Stem Cell Research Center from 2000 to 2002. Expectation dynamics is a chained process: expectation construction - raising fund - performing research. Normally, researchers are considerably circumspect and politically neutral in assessing the result of research. However, some researchers are very involved in building the expectation dynamics by developing an overestimated impact of the result, which can be understood as a kind of strategy for solving the financial problem and defending the criticism in terms of bioethics. Nowadays Biotechnology R&D costs a big budget and requires large site human resources, so building the expectation dynamics is a decisive element for a successful R&D performance, which makes the strategy-development in the political context much more important. By analyzing the actors-network of embryonic stem cell research in term of 'expectation dynamics', we can clarify the identify of embryonic stem cell researchers and draw a conclusion which is very helpful for decision makers and the public to make a decision related with embryonic stem cells.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.51
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• pp.136-155
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• 2010

Media diversity, coupled with the logic of competition in the global media market, has become a fashionable yet unfitting lingo of media policy in Korea. Media diversity has been fenced in the neoliberal economic logic of market competition and so tamed to consumers' free choice in the market. It is within this context that this article attempts to problematize narrowly-defined, market-oriented, and measurement-obssessed funtionalistic approaches to media diversity. In doing so, the article provides a critical overview of various definitions of media diversity. It also reveals how certain definitions, justifications, and measurements are legitimized and normalized in the name of science and objectivity. The core argument is that reflecting a larger neoliberal, deregulatory turn in media policy, media diversity has shifted from the pluralistic principle of democracy to the matter of free market choice or the myth thereof. It then focuses on the ongoing debate between state interventionists and free market liberals over the relationship between media ownership concentration and content diversity. Finally, it puts forth some recommendations as to how media diversity ought to be reconsidered as reformers' cultural politics, rather than marketeers' science, and discusses implications diversity has for deepening Korean democracy.