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http://dx.doi.org/10.22693/NIAIP.2021.28.4.019

Is Political Polarization Reinforced in the Online World?: Empirical Findings of Comments about News Articles  

Eom, Ki-Hong (Kyungpook National University)
Kim, Dae-Sik (Kyungpook National University)
Publication Information
Informatization Policy / v.28, no.4, 2021 , pp. 19-35 More about this Journal
Abstract
The purpose of this research is to investigate the attributes of the online world and to analyze their influence on democracy. The research focuses on the mayoral by-elections that were held in Seoul and Busan, South Korea, on April 4, 2021. The study demonstrates the characteristics of online spaces and the polarization of the online public through news articles and user comments from the Internet. The research includes topic modeling to measure the diversity of media reports, sentiment analysis to measure online public opinion, and interrupted time series analysis to understand how a particular event influences online attitudes. A combination of these methods is used to attempt to estimate the strength of political polarity in the online environment. The study shows diverse media reports by election region and candidate, where the online public repeatedly reveals high negative and low positive attitudes towards each candidate. Moreover, political polarity can differ based on the level of interest in an election. Although voters pay less attention to a by-election than a presidential election, there is a solid political polarity in the online world. Hence, the research recommends preparing measures to alleviate the polarization as politics requires significant online participation.
Keywords
online public opinion; political polarization; topic modeling; sentiment analysis; interrupted time series analysis;
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