Media Discourse Analysis in Small Schools Using Text Mining

Objectives This study attempted to clarify the substance of the media discourse surrounding small schools through media report analysis on small schools that occurred due to the decrease in the school-age population and have become a continuous issue. Methods 48 media outlets were selected through BigKines, and 7,489 media articles were analyzed based on relevance, etc., and duplicates and meaningless words were deleted from the basic research data. The data are classified based on the overall period and small school policy period through data preprocessing, and then keyword analysis and topic modeling are performed. Results First, looking at the trend of media reports, it became generally frequent until 2012, and the amount of media reports has since decreased. In addition, it was confirmed that the amount of media coverage increased due to the influence of the education policy of the Ministry of Education. Second, as a result of keyword analysis, there was a difference between the simple frequency and the distribution of keywords considering TF-IDF. Specifically, considering the distribution considering TF-DIF, ‘consolidation’ appeared as the word with the highest frequency, and a difference between keywords was found between the government-led small school integration period and the city-province-centered period. Third, as a result of topic modeling analysis, a total of 7 topics appeared in the entire period. In addition, the topic of ‘small school integration’ continued to appear regardless of the timing of the small school policy. Finally, as a result of analyzing recent trends, it was compressed into five topics. Conclusions The discourse that continues to appear in the media discourse of small schools is the consolidation of small schools. This can be said to have partially limited the education ministry's view of small schools to ‘consolidation’ when media companies cited press releases from the Ministry of Education and reduced them.