Minor Group Represents 30% of Agora Postings

A recent survey revealed that Daum’s online discussion forum Agora, often described as the “holy land of discussion” by the left-wing media, is dominated by a small number of netizens.

According to Internet market research institute Matrix yesterday, some 373,497 articles, half of the entire 746,993 articles, were posted by 2,205 people, only 3.3 percent of the entire 67,626 users who posted articles on Agora between April 1 and June 18.

Articles written by a 10th (6,763 persons) of all users took up 71 percent (530,365 posts) of all articles posted on Agora, while the top 1 percent of users accounted for 31.9 percent.

Top 10 persons (based on ID counts) posted 21,810 articles during the same period. A close study into their posts revealed that seven of the 10 users have anti-government tendencies and the rest three have pro-government or anti-leftwing tendencies, according to Matrix.

Until now many in the Internet industry had continuously criticized that “the way Daum administers its discussion board is very dangerous because it is based on the principle of unconditional majority-rule and makes it impossible for (the users) to have pro/con discussions.”

Some experts advised, “It will help enable healthy discussions capable of understanding the other side’s argument if there is a separate board for pro/con discussions and a mediator who collects and sums up the main opinions of each side.”

bookum90@donga.com jhk85@donga.com