Sentiment analysis of nuclear energy-related articles and their comments on a portal site in Rep. of Korea in 2010–2019

Abstract

This paper reviewed the temporal changes in the public opinions on nuclear energy in Korea with a big data analysis of nuclear energy-related articles and their comments posted on the portal site NAVER. All articles that included at least one of “nuclear energy,” “nuclear power plant (NPP),” “nuclear power phase-out,” or “anti-nuclear” in their titles or main text were extracted from those posted on NAVER in January 2010–December 2019. First, we performed annual word frequency analysis to identify what words had appeared most frequently in the articles. For that period, the most frequent words were “NPP,” “nuclear energy,” and “energy.” In addition, “safety” has remained in the upper ranks since the Fukushima NPP accident. Then, we performed sentiment analysis of the pre-processed articles. The sentiment analysis showed that positive-tone articles have been reported more frequently than negative-tone over the entire analysis period. Last, we performed sentiment analysis of the comments on the articles to examine the public’s intention regarding nuclear issues. The analysis showed that the number of negative comments to articles each month–irrespective of positive or negative tone–was always larger than that of positive comments over the entire analysis period.