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KMID : 1001320190460030179
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Social Welfare Policy
2019 Volume.46 No. 3 p.179 ~ p.201
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The Themes and Trends of Discourse on the Elderly in Korea Identified by Analyzing Social Media Big Data
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Lee Byung-Ho
Kim Ga-Yeon
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Abstract
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This study aims to identify the major themes and temporal trends of discourse on the elderly in South Korea in which its population is rapidly moving towards aging. To this end, we collect and analyze online social media big data posted from 2004 to 2017 containing relevant keywords with regard to the elderly and the aging society. Prior to conducting big data analysis, we first classify numerous factors significantly affecting the lives of the seniors into four domains of economy, health, relationships, and culture, and then construct a noun-word dictionary for each domain. We employ two methods for analyzing social big data: one is web crawling to calculate the usage frequency of keywords by year and the other is social network analysis to visualize not only the centrality and magnitude of the 100 most frequently appeared keywords but also their interconnectedness. The results suggest that the quality of life of the aged is placed at the center of discourse and associated strongly with economic welfare and health status. Poverty, jobs, and dementia, more specifically, are appeared to be among the most salient themes. Our findings also indicate that the sense of alienation and isolation in interpersonal relationships is closely linked to the mental health and quality of life of the elderly. Taken together, we conclude that the problems of poverty, disease, and solitude, which many old-aged people in contemporary Korea are facing, are intertwined each other and affect the overall quality of life level.
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KEYWORD
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Aging Society, Seniors’ Life Satisfaction, Online Social Media, Big Data Analysis, Social Network Analysis (SNA)
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FullTexts / Linksout information
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Listed journal information
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