Asian Journal of Communication

ISSN: 0129-2986 (Print) 1742-0911 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rajc20

Cosmetic surgery as a commodity for ‘sale’ in

online news

Miri Moon

To cite this article: Miri Moon (2015) Cosmetic surgery as a commodity for ‘sale’ in online
news, Asian Journal of Communication, 25:1, 102-113, DOI: 10.1080/01292986.2014.996167

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01292986.2014.996167

Published online: 19 Feb 2015.

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 Asian Journal of Communication, 2015
Vol. 25, No. 1, 102–113, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01292986.2014.996167

RESEARCH NOTE
Cosmetic surgery as a commodity for ‘sale’ in online news
Miri Moon*

Department of Social Sciences, Media and Communications, College of Business, Arts & Social
Sciences, Brunel University, London, UK
(Received 15 January 2014; accepted 2 November 2014)

A controversial but increasingly prevalent aspect of media research suggests that the
media contributes to the demand for plastic surgery procedures in modern society.
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This study analyzes the online news content on cosmetic surgery procedures in Korea.
Data were collected from ‘Naver,’ the largest Korean portal news archive, from 2007
to 2013. Based on the findings from a quantitative content analysis, the number of
articles that pertain to plastic surgery has dramatically increased each year, and since
2007, more than 60% of the news articles portrayed plastic surgery in a positive light.
News articles also used strategic patterns to include promotional content. The findings
suggest that amid journalism in a highly market-driven environment that struggles to
reconcile its role and commercial challenges, plastic surgery, which is a part of the
largest advertising sector of online news, has become a commodity.
Keywords: new media; online news; plastic surgery; women’s health; advertising

Introduction
In 2010, the USA was the country with the greatest number of cosmetic procedures, with
1,620,855 operations performed that year, followed by Brazil with 1,592,106 operations.
The third and the fourth countries were China and Japan, respectively. South Korea was
the seventh country, with 361,988 cosmetic procedures.1 Considering the population of
each country, South Korea has the highest rate of plastic surgery procedures in the world,
where ‘one in five women in Seoul have gone under the knife’ (The Economist, 23 April
2012). In addition, from a study of 2041 female university students in 2009, 25% had
undergone eyelid surgery, and 80% of the respondents who said that they had not had any
surgery expressed their willingness to undergo cosmetic surgery in the future (The
Chosun Ilbo, 2 September 2009, A23). The pursuit of ‘beauty’ is a burgeoning business
in many countries, but why is South Korea ranked number one for cosmetic surgery in
the world? What may have contributed to the South Koreans’ increasing acceptance and
approval of cosmetic surgery?
A body of studies has explored the major factors that might affect the public’s attitude
toward plastic surgery and behavioral intentions regarding cosmetic surgery. According to
Sarwer and Crerand (2004), the dramatically increased popularity of cosmetic procedures
has been attributed to the greater importance of physical appearance in modern societies,
increased media coverage, and public awareness of cosmetic surgery (Sarwer, Crerand, &
Gibbons, 2007). Among the factors that motivate the public to pursue plastic surgery is

*Email: Miri.Moon1@gmail.com
© 2015 AMIC/SCI-NTU
 Asian Journal of Communication 103

the crucial role of sociocultural influences, particularly the role of the media (Markey,
2004; Reid & Malone, 2008; Sarwer & Crerand, 2004; Sarwer et al., 2007; Swami, 2009;
Tait, 2007). As Askegaard, Gertsen, and Langer (2002) stress, the work on body images
by the public who wants to improve the appearance of their physical features has led to an
interest in the connection between mass media-promoted images of beauty and,
particularly, the formation of self-identity and an increased motivation for cosmetic
surgery. They found that the role of the media in creating ‘self-images’ corresponded with
the rise of consumer culture, based on a combination of a playful youth culture and the
commodification of beauty.
Of great concern is the portrayal of cosmetic surgery as being a lifestyle choice and
free from any possible negative consequences. Previous studies found that many popular
media sources, such as television and the Internet, have portrayed cosmetic surgery in a
positive light (Reid & Malone, 2008; Tait, 2007). Additionally, celebrities’ candid
cosmetic surgery confessions have become part of television entertainment programs, and
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Internet bloggers juxtapose photos of celebrities before and after cosmetic surgery
(Swami, 2009; Tait, 2007). Moreover, the findings show that most articles in women’s
magazines depict cosmetic surgery in a favorable light (Brooks, 2004). Different from
other media, the news media should be a watchdog of the public interest (Curran, 2002)
because the news plays a significant role in the public’s health information and education
(Reid & Malone, 2008; Shoemaker, 1991). Nevertheless, there have been few studies on
the trends in news coverage on cosmetic surgery. Hence, the present study aims to
examine the ways in which the news media reports cosmetic surgery.

Literature review
Media influences
It has been argued that media images of the ‘ideal’ affect women’s body image, leading to
dissatisfaction or lowered self-esteem, particularly in young girls and women, that results
in cosmetic surgery (Hargreaves & Tiggemann, 2002). Swami (2009) stresses that the
only significant predictor for the consideration of cosmetic surgery was a wider and
greater media influence. In particular, empirical studies on the media effects of reality TV
shows, such as ‘Extreme Make-overs’ which conduct cosmetic surgery procedures, show
that the media domesticates or normalizes cosmetic surgery in their frames of portrayal
(Heyes, 2007). Additionally, Markey and Markey (2010) build on past research by
examining predictors of cosmetic surgery and exploring the media’s influence on body
image. They show that an individual’s desire for self-change that stems from a
dissatisfaction with his or her appearance plays a pivotal role in the pursuit of cosmetic
surgery, and a higher extent to which young people believe in the myth of transformation
due to viewing reality television that features cosmetic surgery transformations leads to a
greater desire to change their bodies and faces by using plastic surgery.
Social cognitive theory stipulates that people imitate symbolically modeled behaviors
that are created by the mass media, and the characteristics of modeling formats depend on
what is ‘in vogue’ (Bandura, 2001, p. 283). This framework provides the explanation that
the media educates people on how to behave and provides reasons for a certain action by
altering individuals’ thoughts and perceptions (Bandura, 2001). Thus, the media audience
who are exposed to media content that is salient to sex and violence are the most likely to
learn sexual activity and aggressive behavior. Cultivation theory shows how doses of TV
 104 M. Moon

viewing shape viewers’ beliefs and how content in the print media influences readers’
conceptions of social reality (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli, 1994). Hence, the
media has been thought to promote and domesticate cosmetic surgery (Nabi, 2009; Tait,
2007). While this literature demonstrated the powerful direct and indirect effects of
television on attitudes and behavior, the effects of newspapers seem to be less direct.
However, as Reid and Malone (2008) show, the press plays a vital role in public
education, so it is an imperative to evaluate the portrayal of plastic surgery in newspapers.

News consumption, medical industry, and advertising

It is well-known that South Korea is one of the most wired countries in the world, with
more than 90% of households being connected to broadband Internet (The AP online,
6 July 2012). Their rate of Internet news use was ranked as number one among OECD
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countries in 2008.2 In 2009, the percentage of Internet users in South Korea was 69.7.
The largest percentage of these was 18- to 29-year-olds (99.3%), followed by people in
their 30s (95.1%) and 40s (77.5%). Additionally, 96.9% of these users set a portal site as
their Internet homepage, and 63.3% of participants answered that their most trusted portal
is ‘Naver’ (Newswire online, 21 October 2009).3
‘Naver,’ which was created by a former employee of Samsung SDS,4 is not only a
search engine but also a news distributor and a commercial online commerce site. It is
also ranked in the top three of media sources, along with TV and newspapers, for news
consumption in South Korea. The main agendas are rigorously discussed within the
Naver portal site (Choi & Kim, 2006). In addition, ‘Knowledge iN,’ a venue within
‘Naver’ where Internet users post questions and answers, has many more entries
(80 million) than Wikipedia in Korean (69,000), as of July 2008 (Shim & Yang, 2009).
Hence, ‘Naver,’ is much more than just a search engine.
According to the Korea Press Foundation, the Internet had the second largest source
of advertising revenue among the different media outlets,5 following television, in 2010.
Sixty-four percent of the total revenue comes from advertising sales of $212,792 ($USD),
and over half of the advertising sales are from medical adverts of $101,036 ($USD). The
top 50 Internet news websites obtain 80% of their revenue from medical advertisements
(The Association of Korean Medicine, 21 July 2011).6 Furthermore, 20% of those
advertisements are for clinics, medical drug companies, and beauty-related companies
that are sensational, and 85% of those advertisements rely on sexual appeals with explicit
pictures. These appeals help to increase the likelihood of Internet users clicking on the
adverts that are associated with revenue and consumable web services (Ha et al., 2011;
Song, 2012). However, the convenience of being able to see today’s most popular news
and real-time top buzz words on the very first page without searching or clicking has
accelerated the commercial online market to be concentrated within ‘Naver.’ Hence,
whatever is on the news box on the Naver homepage becomes a ‘hot’ issue and a key
news agenda each day (Choi & Kim, 2006).

Health information in online news

Hurley, Riles, and Sangalang (2014) noted that the media functions as an agenda setter
and influences what audiences should think about. They state that the number of news
stories (e.g., the frequencies of news articles in total or per unit of time) over a certain
 Asian Journal of Communication 105

period in the media indicates the importance of an issue in content research. Additionally,
60% of women seek health or medical information on the Internet, so the Internet is a
significant source of health information (Rice, 2006). Previous research shows that
consumers obtain information about cosmetic surgery from Internet advertisements and
search for details about clinics by using a portal site (Song, 2012), and a major feature of
hyperlinks that appear in Internet news enables users to understand the issue/information
that is discussed more in-depth (Dalrymple & Scheufele, 2007).
However, Bagdikian stated that in Internet news, which is subsidized by advertisers, a
large amount of material is ‘not news in any real sense but is non-advertising material
supporting advertisers’ (2004, p. 246). He also notes that the growing news trend is to
produce a copy that is ‘not marked advertising’ but promotional material that is under the
‘guise of news,’ so the difference between informational and promotional news is subtle.
The Internet sites of dermatology and plastic surgery clinics generate the most cases of
medical advertising standards violations in South Korea.7
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Plastic surgeon as a news source

Reid and Malone (2008) examined 1191 British newspaper articles to assess whether the
media fairly represented the image of plastic surgery. They noted that a more balanced
view was given if the articles included quotes from a qualified plastic surgeon. However,
this seems to be an opportunity to exploit the news article in order to promote the
surgeon’s clinic in South Korea. The news on cosmetic surgery has two faces. Ironically,
a quoted expert is juxtaposed with his or her clinic’s name in the news article and is the
one who provides readers with information about a particular surgery. Additionally, at the
bottom of the news story, they suggest that ‘it is important to find a specialized clinic (in
this particular procedure) and then visit and ask the doctor for more advice.’ Doctors hold
a privileged position with authority in society; they are considered to be all-knowing and
have a high public profile, so in many cases, the news serves to reinforce the medical
profession’s position of power and status by portraying them as impregnable experts
(Galvin & Pearson, 1994). Additionally, the names of a surgeon and a clinic directly lead
to ‘Navering’ (‘Googling’). With expanding media coverage and advertising as a
backdrop, this paper examines the ways in which the Korean online news media portrays
cosmetic plastic surgery in their news coverage by conducting a content analysis. Despite
having the top rate of Internet news use among young people in South Korea, few studies
have attempted to investigate the trends and patterns of online news coverage of plastic
surgery. Therefore, the current study aims to examine the number of the news articles, the
tone of the news, and the promotional aspects with regard to cosmetic surgery. The
research questions and Hypotheses posed are as follows:

RQ1: What is the total number of news articles that covered plastic/cosmetic surgery each
year from 2007 to 2013?

H1: The number of positive-toned news coverage of cosmetic surgery will increase
every year.

H2: The number of news articles with promotional content will be greater than the number of
news articles that avoid direct and indirect promotions overall.
 106 M. Moon

Method
Data for this study were drawn from the ‘Naver’ news archive, from 2007 to 2013. News
stories that contained at least a minimal amount of cosmetic surgery information were
identified by a keyword search term. The news articles were retrieved by searching for
the keyword ‘SungHyung’ in Korean. The term refers to both plastic surgery and
cosmetic surgery, and there is no other word that has the same meaning in the Korean
language. Thus, overlaps with any other word were avoided. News about TV and movie
guides or reviews that featured a cosmetic surgeon or cosmetic surgery were excluded. A
content analysis was used to examine the news coverage of cosmetic surgery because this
method is widely regarded as a useful tool in understanding the characteristics of news
texts and content (Krippendorff, 2004). The unit of analysis for this paper is an individual
news article from the ‘Naver’ portal news archives because the entire news story had to
be examined for this present paper. The average number of words in a news article that
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was on the front page of The Chosun Ilbo (top selling daily newspaper in South Korea) is
720 words (Park, 2006), but the average number of words in a sampled online news
article was much shorter, at only 287 words. This word count range varied from 175
to 390.

The number of news articles on cosmetic surgery

To measure the frequency of news articles that covered plastic surgery each year, the total
number of news articles from the ‘Naver’ archives from 2007 to 2013 for each year are
tabulated.

News tone
The tone of the news on cosmetic surgery was assessed for positive, neutral, and negative
reporting, based on the themes by Brooks (2004),8 the conceptual definition for the
positive news tone was outlined in this study.

Positive
If a text includes, or begins with, descriptions, such as ‘this particular surgery is what
many people normally do in recent times,’ the news will be categorized as Positive.
Additionally, if the news describes how to reach the ideal appearance, which emphasizes
rejuvenating the face; altering others’ first impressions of one’s body; a positive outlook
for one’s future or careers/jobs; and if the short length of an operation and the recovery
time are mentioned in the news story, the articles will be classified as a positive tone. If a
text includes consultant content that is produced by a cited surgeon and provides the full
name of his or her clinic, it will be coded as positively toned news.

Neutral
Neutral news was the label that was provided to a fairly balanced report on plastic
surgery. Thus, if a text includes side effects or complications, even if it depicts a partially
positive attribute of cosmetic surgery in the news, it will be categorized as ‘Neutral.’
 Asian Journal of Communication 107

Thus, neutral news could have a positive, as well as a negative, evaluation of cosmetic
surgery.

Negative
If the news elucidates all of the risks, possible disability outcomes, problems, and
criticisms that are related to a surgery, with no mention of any beneficial results, the story
will be classified as negative. In addition, if the news reports problems that relate to
illegal surgical procedures, excessive advertisements for cosmetic surgery, and the
prevailing ‘lookism’ in a society, the news’ tone will be viewed as negative.

News source use and promotional content

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According to Erjavec (2004), a key feature of promotional news reports is that they do
not answer questions that are related to ‘who,’ ‘when,’ and ‘where,’ which are included in
typical news coverage of social events. Erjavec (2004) classified the typical promotional
news reports by using the advertisement’s features and press releases. First, the
promotional news texts focus on promotional practices and the characteristics of a
particular topic that is reported, and they analyze a product or its service. Second,
promotional news content only presents a positive point of view. Third, while typical
news reports have various news sources, promotional news stories only depend on one
news source. It is rare for them to use independent sources (pp. 564–565). Based on
Erjavec’s approach, I incorporated these characteristics into the topic of cosmetic surgery
in this analysis.
Unlike the news about health-care issues for which a doctor at a university hospital is
usually interviewed, one of the major characteristics of news about cosmetic surgery is
that often only private clinic surgeons (whose interests lie in advertising and profit
making) are cited in the news articles that were examined for this study. Thus, if a news
text only uses one positive news source at a private clinic and does not follow the typical
standards that are used in the news report of a particular event, it will be identified as
promotional content. Additionally, if only one news source is used, and it is from a local
clinic, which could be an active advertiser, and the news text specifies a full name of the
quoted surgeon and a full name of the clinic, the story will be categorized as promotional
content.
If a text only provides the initials for a surgeon or clinic, it will be categorized as a
news story that does not have a promotional intention. In cases where the full name of a
surgeon that is affiliated with a public institute or a university hospital is included, the
articles will be categorized as ‘not promotional’ because these places are not profitable
establishments for a plastic surgeon. It was noteworthy that there were no quotes from
surgeons who worked at university hospitals in the news data for this study because
plastic surgery procedures are performed at private clinics, as well as university hospitals.
Additionally, if the article does not mention a surgeon’s name or a clinic’s name, it will be
categorized as ‘not promotional.’ A typically written news story about a social event that
pertains to plastic surgery is coded as non-promotional content.
 108 M. Moon

Sampling procedure and coding

Riffe, Lace, and Fico (2005) concluded that using a sample of two constructed weeks
from a year of daily newspapers is more efficient than random sampling, or selecting two
Mondays, two Tuesdays, etc. However, due to the vast collection of news data that are
devoted to plastic surgery and were retrieved from ‘Naver,’ this study sampled one
constructed week, from Monday to Sunday, each year in August 2006 to 31 July 2011.
One constructed week was selected by using a random numbers’ table, without replacing
the numbers. The ‘Naver’ news archive shows 10 news stories on each page. Therefore,
one story at the top and another at the bottom of each page were selected. If a story at the
bottom is not relevant to this study, the news that was located second from the bottom of
the page was selected instead. Unlike offline newspaper articles, online news search
results can be different each time that they are searched over a period of time, so online
news was downloaded and saved at the same time for each day that was sampled. Fifty
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news articles for each year from 2007 to 2011 were sampled for this analysis (N = 250).
The ‘Naver’ news archives include 11 sections: 10 Dailies (Jonghap in Korean), 16
TV broadcasts and news agencies, 10 Economy, 5 Internet news, 6 IT, 35 Sports and
Celebrity, 17 Magazine, 9 English Dailies and Medical news, 3 local newspaper, 5 Photo,
and 3 others (disaster and policy briefing). The news media selected were Dailies-
‘Jonghap,’ TV broadcasts, Economy, Internet, IT, and Sports and Celebrity news because
they report news in all of the sections, such as politics, economy, society, and culture, on
a daily basis, similar to daily newspapers. Additionally, this research data only used
straight news, excluding columns and features. The final sample included 250 news
articles from the ‘Naver’ archives. The coding process was completed by two coders9
who had advanced degrees in Journalism and extensive mass media research experience.
Many training sessions were conducted prior to the actual assessment. After training
about the coding rules and their definitions occurred, the differences were thoroughly
discussed, and the coders’ agreement rules were refined. The recommendation of coding
10–20% of the total sample (15%; n = 30) for reliability was met (Wimmer & Dominick,
1997). To determine intercoder reliability for the nominal level variables, the computation
of Cohen’s Kappa was implemented. The intercoder reliability coefficient regarding the
news tone category was Kappa = .73. The value of the Cohen’s Kappa reliability
coefficient regarding the promotional content category was .86.

Results and data analysis

RQ1 relates to the frequencies of online cosmetic surgery news over the years. The total
numbers of news articles on cosmetic surgery were 8390, 10,961, 13,398, 22,543,
27,563, 27,872, and 36,913 in the following chronological order: from 2006 to 2007;
from 2007 to 2008; from 2008 to 2009; from 2009 to 2010; from 2010 to 2011; from
2011 to 2012, and from 2012 to 2013, respectively.
As the results show, between 2006 and 2007, the number of the news articles on
cosmetic surgery increased by 30.6% over the similar period in 2007–2008. Furthermore,
the total number drastically increased by 68.3% during the following year. However, from
2010 to 2011 and from 2011 to 2012, the number only increased by 22.3% and 1.1%,
respectively. Then again in 2013, the number increased by 32.5%. This showed the
overall upward trend in news articles on cosmetic surgery.
 Asian Journal of Communication 109

Hypothesis 1 stated that the positively toned news would increase every year. To
assess the tone of news each year, frequency analysis was performed. Figure 1 shows that
each year, the positive representation of news coverage in reference to cosmetic surgery
has increased, except for 2010. However, even during that year, positive news was
dominant. Moreover, the number of news stories with a positive tone increased
dramatically by 45.5% in 2008, 15.6% in 2009, and 35.5% in 2011; however, 2010
showed a 16.2% decrease. It is worth noting that the number of neutrally toned news
reports began to increase between August 2009 and July 2010, from 16% to 28%. In
2010, the news about plastic surgery became fairly well-balanced, with side effects and
complications being mentioned, based on the drastic increase in the number of the news
articles with a neutral tone, which was 75% in 2010. However, beginning on 1 August
2009, it was noticeable that a number of news reports on plastic surgery were about
reoperation, in particular for the eyes and nose. Reasons for why reoperation was needed
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were provided and included patients suffering from side effects and complications.
Hypothesis 2 stated that the number of news articles with promotional content would
be higher than the number of news articles that avoided direct and indirect promotions.
Frequency analyses were conducted to test the Hypothesis. As Table 1 shows, Hypothesis
2 was partially supported. In 2007, the number of the news articles with initials, which
was 52%, appeared more frequently than articles that included the full name of a surgeon
and a clinic (which was 48%). However, the number of articles that included the full
name of a surgeon and his or her clinic rapidly increased each year: 66% in 2008, 76% in
2009, 80% in 2010, and 94% in 2011. In other words, in 2011, as much as 94% of the
news articles on cosmetic surgery had promotional content.

The association between positively toned news and promotional content

To examine the second hypothesis (H2), which referred to whether positively toned news
would be more likely to contain promotional content, a chi-square test was performed.
The relationship between the two variables was found to be significant, χ2(df = 2,

90
80
70
News tone (%)

60
50
Positive
40
Neutral
30 Negative
20
10
0
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Year (2007–2011)

Figure 1. Trends in positive, neutral, and negative tone of online news reports on cosmetic surgery
in Korea from 2007 to 2011.
 110 M. Moon

Table 1. Comparison of the number of news articles with promotional content versus
non-promotional content online news reports on cosmetic surgery.

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

n % n % n % n % n %

Promotional 24 48 33 66 38 76 40 80 47 94
Non-promotional 26 52 17 34 12 24 10 20 3 6
Total 50 100 50 100 50 100 50 100 50 100

N = 250) = 163.881, p < .05. Thus, there was a close relationship between positively
toned news and promotional content and H2 was supported.
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Conclusion and discussion

The sensationalism or tabloidization of the news media is a global trend that replaces
objective journalism with commercialized, market-driven news media. Additionally, as
news media develops and expands, faster and lighter news is forging an environment that
accelerates news tabloidization (Curran, Iyengar, Lund, & Salovaara-Moring, 2009;
Sparks & Tulloch, 2000). In addition, the changing pattern of news consumption (i.e., the
use of Internet news among the young) has increased Internet advertising revenues in
South Korea. Considering the fact that 80% of the major Internet news advertising
revenue is from medical sectors, it would be pivotal to investigate the dynamics of these
advertisers within the realm of Internet news.
This study tackled the relationships between the advertisers, Internet users, and the
news media through the use of a content analysis on news about cosmetic surgery, which
is a part of the largest advertising sector of Internet news. Hence, the pressure on news
institutions, which have to obtain a high click-through rate because this rate is directly
linked to their revenue in advertising, and the competition between approximately 115
news media outlets in ‘Naver’ news do not reflect the healthy nature of journalistic
practices. Rather, images of idealized bodies are for sale, and consumers are constantly
reminded of these body images through reports on cosmetic surgery in Internet news.
Therefore, the risks and dangers of cosmetic surgery are behind-the-scenes, and the
‘beauty,’ ‘trends,’ and ‘better future’ that are highlighted through articles on cosmetic
surgery are inter-wound with news information.
The findings show that the number of news articles about plastic surgery has
increased every year, and the tone of most of the news that relates to plastic surgery has
turned positive; negatively toned news is gradually disappearing. Importantly, the results
indicate that positively toned news is positively linked to promotional news content. In
addition, since August 2006, promotional news reports about cosmetic surgery have
increased every year, while non-promotional news reports have decreased.
Furthermore, this present study has identified the characteristics of online news
reports that pertain to cosmetic surgery and the trends in online news coverage on plastic
surgery, over the period of five years. The increasingly positively tone used for news
articles about cosmetic surgery have demonstrated that the news media plays a role in
setting a media agenda by making the issue, ‘plastic surgery,’ prominent in a primarily
 Asian Journal of Communication 111

positive way. Additionally, persistent use of only a private clinic surgeon, who provides
his or her full name in the article, as a news source was implemented, although there are
other ways of citing independent news sources, such as quoting a university hospital
surgeon, consumer ombudsman, or other experts. Moreover, the news did not answer the
questions of ‘who,’ ‘when,’ and ‘where,’ which are answered in typical news coverage of
social events; this omission is the key feature of promotional content (Erjavec, 2004).
Different from other entertainment media outlets, news media is an important medium for
information and the formation of opinions (Shah, Cho, Eveland, & Kwak, 2005).
Nevertheless, this study showed that news texts used messages promoting plastic surgery
that were salient to the media consumers. Concerns toward relatively vulnerable young
girls and women who read and trust the news on the Internet are growing.
Identifying promotional elements and trends in online news was not easy because the
texts were already strategically constructed to conceal promotional content in the news,
and there have been no previous studies on news coverage patterns. Additionally, the
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intercoder reliability for the news tone category was less than ideal (Kappa = .73).
Because the ‘Naver’ news archive includes both traditional newspapers’ online versions
and Internet news, it would be beneficial to investigate the normative characteristics of
the portrayals of cosmetic surgery and conduct comparative studies on traditional
mainstream newspapers and Internet news regarding cosmetic surgery. Furthermore,
exploring to what extent other forces may influence the media content, depending on the
media type, would be useful for future studies.
While the current study has limitations that should be considered, this article reveals
certain influential factors regarding the popularity of cosmetic surgery in South Korea by
analyzing online news that pertains to plastic surgery in the new media era. This research
is an initial study which explores a major Asian cultural phenomenon that may be fuelled
by the news media. Finally, the discursive analysis of the complex relationship between
Internet news institutions and the advertisers’ and news readers’ interests, whereby
structural Internet news production is under greater commercial pressures and is bound by
legislative practices, has significant implications for online journalism and suggests the
need to revisit the roles of health journalism and a news maker’s professional ethics.

Notes
1. Non-surgical procedures account for 1,918,042 in the USA and 283,013 in South Korea.
According to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (ISAPS) data, the most
popular surgical procedures in 2010 were Breast Augmentation (275,038), Lipoplasty (208,831),
and Blepharoplasty (114,146) in the USA and Lipoplasty (49,050), and Rhinoplasty (35,350) in
South Korea. Botulinum Toxin Type A (Botox Dysport) ranked highest for nonsurgical
procedures in both the USA (807,263) and South Korea (97,238), http://www.isaps.org/isaps-
global-statistics.html.
2. The Asia Economy, 21 June 2010.
3. The Media Research Results 2009, http://www.newswire.co.kr/newsRead.php?no=435485.
4. Samsung SDS is a leading information and communication technology service provider and is a
part of the Samsung Group. They provide business partnerships in the public, finance,
manufacturing, and service sectors (http://sds.samsung.co.kr/index.jsp).
5. It accounts for $335,090 in total in 2010.
6. http://akom.org/bbs/board.php?bo_table=news&wr_id=13923
7. Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice, 11 March 2011.
8. Brooks (2004) analyzed articles on cosmetic surgery in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, US Weekly, and
People magazines from October 2001 to June 2003. Two dominant frames that were considered
 112 M. Moon

were cosmetic surgery as new technology and candid reporting. New technologies are associated
with the themes of scientific wonder, innovation and progress, casual accessibility and medical
expertise, and health. The candid account consists of individuals’ personal stories of their
experiences of surgery. However, the latter was not shown in the news.
9. Two native Korean Ph.D. students at Korea University in Seoul, South Korea, coded the data for
this study.

Notes on contributor
Miri Moon is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology and Communication, Brunel
University, London. The author has worked as a news reporter and a radio producer for the Korean
media. She received her BA in Media and Communications from Goldsmiths, University of
London. Her research interests focus on new media and strategic communications.
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