• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.9-43
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• 2019

Web novels are one of the most actively adapted genre novels under a new medium called the Internet. Research on cultural content implemented on top of digital media is naturally closely related to environmental changes in digital media. The same goes for Web novels sparked by the identity of Web platforms. Especially in the case of web novels, the platform itself that provides them has triggered direct changes in genre code and reading patterns. From this perspective, this thesis wanted to examine the formation process and strategic features of web novels, which became content and products on the web platform environment. First of all, through the formation process ranging from communication novels to Internet novels and web novels, I arranged the transition to digital media and the change of genre novel market. This was an attempt to extract that Web novels not only have continuity as genre novels, but also have a turning point as digital content. Web novels are digital content that internalizes the values of the Web 2.0 era. It should also be a core product that grows the pie in the market in its own right. This paper noted that web novels are content that embodies these consumption values. So this thesis considered about what is the visualization and commercialization strategy of the web-based novels that is currently formed, and what is the current status of the web-based romance novels as the content and the product that is driving OSMU most actively in the process of commercialization. Through this process, I found that the greatest characteristic of web novels as genre novels that have evolved into digital content is their division and crack of genre.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.158-165
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• 2020

Web novels that are consumed on mobile devices are characterized by capturing one aspect of our society. The purpose of this study was to collect the keywords from web novels, to identify trends of web novels, and further to analyze the covert needs and characteristics of readers in connection with the existing researches. As a result of the analysis, novels with modern backgrounds and adult novels were popular in relation to easily readable and accessible mobile environment. Male characters tend to be ideally depicted in web novels. In contrast, characters with inner scars were popular among female characters. Although this study did not conduct an in-depth analysis of adult novels due to the limitation of web crawling, it is meaningful that this study analyzed modern people's inner needs and characteristics using the para-text like keywords in existing web novel studies that previously lacked quantitative analysis.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.17 no.11
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• pp.609-620
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• 2017

This study set out to examine the effects of usage characteristics of web novels, which have recently gained popularity in the Internet and mobile platforms, on the satisfaction and continued usage intention of users. For that purpose, the investigator conducted a survey with 333 web novel users. The survey results show that web novel users recorded a high level of flow when they had a challenging spirit and proficiency in the process of using the content. Their high level of flow in web novels had positive impacts on their satisfaction and continued usage intention for web novels. When they were highly satisfied with web novels, they intended to use the content continuously. Those findings indicate that web novel users should be encouraged to have a challenging spirit and proficiency in the content consumption process so that they can develop flow in the content. In addition, it is suggested that there should be efforts to increase their flow and satisfaction to promote their continued usage of web novels.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.119-126
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to see if cultural contents that are characterized by experience goods have different types of One Source Multi Use (OSMU) phenomena. This study classified original works into web-novels and webtoons, and studied how OSMU evolution paths can be different between the two types of originals. In addition, this study compared Korean and Chinese examples. Using eight original works created between 1999 and 2012, which were later used for OSMU, this study investigated how web-novels and webtoons took different OSMU evolution paths in Korea and China. As a result, this study found that web-novels are more actively used in different formats than webtoons, probably because web-novels can more easily stimulate people's imaginations. In addition, Korea was found to use story-centered OSMU before character-centered OSMU, whereas China showed both types of OSMU simultaneously.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.10
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• pp.658-675
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• 2022

With the advent of the OTT platform, the world has become an era in which the same media content is shared and reacted in real time by being grouped into one culture. This study attempts a producer study of web novel writers, who are producers of the web novel market that is expanding into webtoons, dramas, and movies with IP (intellectual property rights) of the original story at a time when Korean K-content such as "Squid Game" and "Weird Lawyer Woo Young-woo" leads the global market. In this study, web novel writers were viewed as producers of commercial media content, not just 'Novelist', and their identities and characteristics of the labor process were examined. Web novel writers began writing web novels as a side job or two jobs, and cited the fact that they can make profits alone without barriers to entry and without incurring capital or facility costs. Although there is no barrier to entry, most writers experience severe failure in their first work, which is attributed to the misunderstanding that the word "writer" is someone who writes what they want in any genre. Web novels are different, so writers go through the process of realizing that in order to succeed by writing web novels, they must be thoroughly in the audience's shoes and write them according to the trends and codes they want. Web novel writers expressed their identity as "story sellers," "story producers," "people who can produce IP alone," and "people who satisfy fantasies that cannot be achieved in reality," and in common, there was a strong sense of being a person who provides stories and makes profits or sales. Regarding the burden of writing a huge amount of web novels, the writer with a high income expressed a generous position that "the income is higher than the effort," but ordinary writers complained of difficulties in the hard work, saying, "It seems like I am working hard on writing that I have to write constantly.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.259-284
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• 2022

In order to help the understanding of web novel users, this study was intended to quantitatively verify the user's behavioral types according to the characteristics of web novels. For this purpose, the direction of the study proceeded as follows. First, the motives of web novel users were investigated by referring to the motives of other digital content users. In addition, specific behavioral types of users were also collected. As a result, the motivation for using web novels was found to be 'interpersonal relationships and information acquisition with others', 'leisure activities', and 'escape from reality/relieve tension'. After that, the groups were classified as to whether there was a difference between groups according to the motives of use. As a result, the 'hobbies' type, a group with a particularly high motivation for using leisure activities, the 'stress relief' type, a group with very high escapism and tension relief characteristics, and a group with high interpersonal relationships and information acquisition with others The 'communication' type was classified as a 'multipurpose' type with high overall motivation characteristics. Then, in order to find out the specific characteristics between the types, personas were constructed based on the different behavior type data. Through this, the theoretical contribution of this study is meaningful in that it revealed the motives of web novel users. As a practical contribution, the persona was formed by combining the users' motives and behavioral patterns and visualized to be close to the actual representative users. These results are expected to help improve the web novel service by providing useful indicators for actual writers, platform managers, and users.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.38
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• pp.191-214
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• 2015

Chinese American Writer, Ha Jin has been writing exclusively about the life in his native Communist China. His stories and poems are almost all about the Chinese people so far. In addition, the distinctive Chinese flavour and the inexorably repressive image of China in his works present an 'Other' to the American culture. Such kind of Chineseness can also be found in Ha Jin's works and his career as a writer. The continued demand for knowledge of China, which is created by China's increasingly important role in the globalized economy, sustains the country's position as an Other for America. In his early four novels, Ha Jin portrays a totally repressive image of Communist China, an image of which functions perfectly as a form of otherness for his American readers. In Ha Jin's portrayal, the Chinese masses are subjected to the Communist authority through its bureaucracy and state-economy mechanism, as well as through the godlike image of Mao Zedong. They are to follow the Communist conscience and subscribe to unity-in-difference. Deviation from the one-party rule is intolerable. In each of the novels, Ha Jin presents a specific system of repression. In In the Pond, confrontation against Party authority is contained by a process of complicity. In Waiting, the Party's power is upheld through a system of surveillance in which people act as agents, resulting in a web of power which paralyses love. The Crazed illustrates a play of power by Party officials which, against the backdrop of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, is full of craze itself, driving people either out of sanity or out of the country. War Trash exposes the Communist power's repression to the extreme by presenting a case of dishonour in those whose life is debased as trash by the Party. The repressive image of China produced in these stories, which span over half a century, makes Ha Jin's China a perfect Other for the West. To sum up, Ha Jin's novels construct a repressive image of China. In his novels, Ha Jin exposes the working of repression in particular systems. Through these systems, he problematizes the notion of personal autonomy for Chinese people and proposes for his western/American readers a solution which eventually turns into a re-presentation of American hegemony.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2023.05a
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• pp.552-554
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• 2023

웹소설 시장의 성장에 따라 웹소설 추천 시스템의 중요성이 높아지고 있다. 본 연구에서는 작품의 특성 및 선호도를 나타낼 수 있는 다양한 데이터를 활용하여 추천시스템을 구현하고 그 성능을 평가하여 표지 이미지와 작품 특성을 모두 고려한 멀티 모달 추천 시스템이 가장 효율적임을 보여주었다. 연구 결과, 단일 변수 추천에서는 작품 소개글과 표지 이미지 기반 추천이 가장 좋은 성능을 보였고, 멀티 모달 추천 시스템에서는 작품 소개글, 이미지, 키워드 순으로 성능에 좋은 영향을 끼치는 것으로 나타났다. 이번 연구 결과는 한국콘텐츠진흥원에서 조사한 웹소설 이용자 실태조사와는 조금 다른 결과를 보여주었다. 설문조사에서는 인기도를 웹소설 선택 시 가장 중요한 영향으로 봤으나, 본 연구에서는 작품 소개글이 가장 중요한 영향을 미친다는 결과가 나타났다. 이러한 연구 결과는 웹소설 추천 시스템의 개발과 운영에 있어서 중요한 참고 자료가 될 것으로 예상된다.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.41-66
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• 2019

This paper looks at the readers and publishing strategies of paperback romance novels in the the 1980s based on the 'high-teen' concept. The purpose of this article is to examine the meaning the 'high-teen' concepts as expressed in the media through the publication of paperback romance series in the 1980s. Among paperback romance series, this paper was based on pirated/licensed version of novels published by Harlequin, a Canadian publisher, and the magazine media's advertising promotional phrases that were published targeting the same readers. Since the 1970s, mass media have referred to teenagers as high-teens and called them important consumers. High-teen was a term referring to teenagers in school uniforms, mostly girls, and in the 1980s, 'high-teen' was also introduced as a new consumer market, and the publishing market put forward a number of publishing strategies to attract them. The paperback romance, including , has identified 'high-teen' readers as late-teen girls, sensitive consumers for best-sellers/million-sellers, readers with a tendency to read stories of love, and readers that favor American and Western culture. Since the 1980s, the market for paperback romance has been in the recession, but readers have kept the romance genre alive by accepting and localizing the Harlequin series. With the rise of a new form of media called the 'Web Novel', interest in the romance genre is increasing, and we hope this study will serve as a starting point for a variety of discussions with (women) readers about romance reading/enjoyment.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.63-76
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• 2022

Consumers of web novels read online reviews in order to decrease uncertainty when purchasing a web novel. This study examines the types of messages (factual or evaluative) that consumers find more useful and verifies the moderating effect of individual analytical decision-making style levels on differences in usefulness evaluation. Based on the tendency to acquire objective information, the usefulness of factual online reviews was expected to be higher in the context of buying experience goods, such as a web novel. Levels of analytical decision-making styles, which were classified based on individual perception, are also expected to affect the usefulness evaluation of reviews. Experiments 1 and 2 were repeatedly conducted to examine whether consumers think factual reviews are more useful than evaluative reviews. In particular, Experiment 2 was conducted to simulate the circumstance of selecting a romance web novel and demonstrated that reviews have a significant effect on messages and decision-making styles. The interaction effect between analytical decision-making style levels and review message types was also confirmed in Experiment 2. The results of this study can help researchers and marketers comprehend the behavioral patterns of web novel readers when evaluating reviews and consuming experience goods.