본 연구는 인스타툰의 저널리즘 보완 역할 가능성에 대한 탐색적 연구로서, 사실을 기반으로 한 같은 내용의 데이트폭력 사건을 뉴스 기사와 인스타툰의 형태로 제시했을 때 콘텐츠의 형태 차이가 수용자의 데이트폭력 편견에 다른 영향을 미치는지, 그리고 어떠한 심리과정을 거쳐 설득 효과를 가지는지를 검증하고자 온라인 실험을 진행했다. 공분산분석과 경로분석을 수행한 결과, 제시된 콘텐츠의 형태는 수용자의 데이트폭력 편견에 직접적인 영향을 주지 못하였으나, 인스타툰은 뉴스 기사에 비해 수용자의 동일시, 몰입에 통계적으로 유의한 영향을 주고, 이어서 동일시와 몰입은 수용자의 데이트폭력 편견에 통계적으로 유의한 영향을 주는 것을 발견했다. 즉, 수용자의 사회이슈 인식변화에 있어서 콘텐츠의 형태 차이 자체보다는 몰입과 동일시에 용이하다는 인스타툰의 내러티브적 속성이 수용자의 설득 효과에 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 본 연구는 아직까지 학문적 논의가 거의 없었던 인스타툰의 매체적 특성을 웹툰 관련 선행연구들의 검토와 연구자의 관찰을 통해 학문적으로 정리하고자 시도한 점, 내러티브의 설득효과를 검증할때 조절변인으로서 주로 논의되어온 동일시와 몰입변인의 완전매개효과를 발견하여 인스타툰이 어떤 과정을 통해 수용자의 데이트폭력 편견을 낮출 수 있는지 그 기저 과정을 밝힌 점, 주로 단순설문을 통해 검증이 이루어지던 매개모형을 실험을 통해 수집한 데이터를 통해 검증했다는 점에서 기존 연구들과의 차별성 및 의의가 있다. 또한 인스타툰이 동일시와 몰입을 통해 사회적 편견을 낮추는 데 영향을 미칠 수 있음을 실증적으로 검증함으로써 제한적이나마 인스타툰 형태의 콘텐츠가 뉴스 형태의 기존 저널리즘이 놓칠 수도 있는 세심한 부분을 보완할 수 있음을 시사하고자 했다.
　
We have seen several times in the past few years that various non-fiction-based narratives have been in the spotlight, creating a public forum, and re-emerging related social issues. This study is an exploratory study of the possibility of Insta-toon"s complementary role in journalism. Insta-toon refers to a webtoon that has no agreed academic definition but posts 10 cartoon-style pictures on Instagram. In this study, two groups of readers were given the same story about date violence based on facts in the form of Insta-toons and news articles. We conducted an online experiment to verify whether differences in the form of content have a different effect on reader’s dating violence bias, and what psychological processes have persuaded them. The results of covariance analysis and path analysis found that the form of content presented did not directly affect the reader"s dating violence bias. However Insta-toon did have a statistically significant effect on reader’s identification, transportation and, in turn, identification and transportation had a statistically significant effect on reader’s dating violence bias compared to news articles. Transportation is the process in which all attention and imagination are focused on the events in the story, and identification is a comprehensive psychological phenomenon, such as the readers being immersed in the story and feeling the events in the story as if they were happening to themselves or imagining emotions and thoughts from the main character"s point of view. In the other words, rather than the difference in the form of content itself, the nature of narratives that contain the form of content, which allow easy identification and transportation, has been shown to affect the persuasion effect of the reader. This study presented three media characteristics of Insta-toon as factors likely to play a complementary role in journalism: the narratives of the story structure, the psychological realism property of SNS, and the emotional property of the picture. It has been verified that narratives can have indirect persuasive effects through parameters that are identification and transportation. However, with the same guidance of a story based on a real-life event presented, there was no difference in perceived realism between the news articles group and Insta-toons group. The difference in feelings between the two groups about dating violence was also unrevealed. This study is different from existing research as follows: First, we attempted to academically summarize the media characteristics of Insta-toons, which have garnered little academic discussion till now. Second, by finding the full mediation effect of the identification and transportation variables, we revealed the underlying process of how Insta-toons can reduce readers" dating violence bias. Third, the mediation model, which had been verified mainly through simple surveys, was verified through data collected through experiments. It also tried to empirically verify that Insta-toons can affect the lowering of social prejudice through identification and transportation, suggesting that, though in limited scale, Insta-toon content can compensate for the details that existing journalism in the form of news may miss.