Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

April 24, 2023

How Fans of Korean Music Mobilized Anti-Israel Sentiment

The political importance of online communities.

In the past decade, popular music from Korea—known as K-Pop—has gained a broad international audience, and the devotees of the genre have developed a reputation for their enthusiastic and sometimes aggressive activity on social media. Amos Hervitz, David Siman-Tov, and Javier Shocron explain the way the online “K-Pop community” has used such platforms as Twitter and TikTok to generate an intense sense of fellow feeling, and in turn directed that feeling toward political aims. In one case, for instance, K-Pop fans appear to have engaged in the organized sabotage of a political rally for Donald Trump. They have also turned their considerable influence against Israel:

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