This article confronts a foundational problematic in Western-inflected scholarship on media and democracy by investigating the emergence, structure, and operation of OhmyNews, a Korean primarily online publication that hybridizes features of both commercial and ostensibly ‘alternative’ media. After an analysis informed by the social and historical context of Korean politics, economics, and society of the past 40 years, the article concludes that OhmyNews is a unique response to unique enabling conditions, and that its commercial features are inextricably a part of its progressive nature. While the assumed mutual exclusivity of commercialization and progressive politics should be subjected to critical analysis, the dynamics of neoliberal globalization may still increase the relevance of this Western problematic.
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