The networked cultural diffusion of Korean wave

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the diffusion of a popular Korean music video on the video-sharing web site YouTube. It applies a webometric approach in the diffusion of innovations framework to study three elements of diffusion in a Web 2.0 environment: users, user-to-user relationship and user-generated comment. Design/methodology/approach – The webometric approach combines profile analyses, social network analyses, semantic and sentiment analyses. Findings – The results show that male users in the US played a dominant role in the early-stage diffusion. The dominant users represented the innovators and early adopters in the evaluation stage of the diffusion, and they engaged in continuous discussions about the cultural origin of the video and expressed criticisms. Overall, the discussion between users varied according to their gender, age, and cultural background. Specifically, male users were more interactive than female users, and users in countries culturally similar to Korea were more likely to express favourable attitudes toward the video. Originality/value – The study provides a webometric approach to examine the Web 2.0-based social system in the early-stage global diffusion of cultural offerings. This approach connects the diffusion of innovations framework to the new context of Web 2.0-based diffusion.