Abstract
This paper aims at exploring how conservative and liberal newspapers in South Korea framed PyeongChang 2018 directly. Our research questions addressed four points: first, different attitudes of conservative and liberal newspapers in the PyeongChang news reporting; second, their success and failure in influencing public opinion; third, South Koreans’ perceptions on PyeongChang 2018; and fourth, South Korean public reliance on the newspapers. To investigate the framing differences, we employed a big data analytic method (automated semantic network analysis) with NodeXL (analytic software). Conclusively, we were able to find out four main findings. First, the conservative media showed pessimistic attitudes to the Olympics, and the liberal media did conversely. Second, despite the conservative media’s resourcefulness, they could not succeed in influencing public opinion. Third, the conservative media perceived the Olympics as an undesirable event, but the liberal media did the Olympics as a significant event for further peace promotion. Fourth, the conservative media’s framings did not considerably influence upon the public opinion. As a conclusion, the public are no longer passive recipients of the messages from the media. Instead, they tend to selectively accept the information from the media based on ‘collective intelligence’. This trend provides a significant implication for enhancing the sustainability of the media environment in South Korea.
Highlights
The XXIII Winter Olympics held from 9 to 25 February 2018 in PyeongChang County, SouthKorea drew a considerable amount of attention from global media
Semantic network analysis is a form of content analysis that identified the network of associations between concepts expressed in the text [42,43]
Doerfel and Barnett conducted a semantic network analysis to probe the structure of the International Communication Association (ICA) [45]
Summary
The XXIII Winter Olympics held from 9 to 25 February 2018 in PyeongChang County, SouthKorea drew a considerable amount of attention from global media. The Olympics, commonly known as PyeongChang 2018, was a highly striking event not because it accommodated the largest number of participating countries, people, and games in the Olympic history. It was because of the ‘peaceful mood’ created between two Koreas as realised in introducing a joint-marching in the opening ceremony, establishing a unified Korean female ice hockey team, and inviting North Korean delegates to the opening and closing ceremonies. North and South Koreas, and between Pyongyang and Washington in the end In this regard, the Olympics has created a significant image as a “Peace Olympics”. Such image bears vast disparities between major media in South Korea in accordance with their political orientations
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