• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.350-366
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• 2022

The objective of this study is to empirically verify the relationship between the image of politicians, political belief agreement, and voting intention recognized through YouTube content, centering on the 4·7 Seoul Mayor's Election. A survey was conducted on voters in their 20s or older living in Seoul, and the following main results were derived. First, among the factors of politician image, morality, leadership, and administrative power were found to have a significant positive effect on political belief agreement. Second, it was found that the consensus of political beliefs with politicians had a significant positive effect on voters' voting intentions. Third, it was found that among the factors of politician image, political ability and communication ability had a directly significant positive effect on voting intention. Fourth, it was found that politicians' morality, leadership, and administrative power all had a significant effect on voters' voting intentions through political consensus. The significance of this study is that this study identified the factors of politician image on political belief agreement and voter voting intention by applying the relationship between politician image, political belief agreement, and voter voting intention to YouTube content.

• Informatization Policy
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.19-35
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• 2021

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.