The Korean Wave during the coronavirus pandemic: an analysis of social media activities in Indonesia

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the temporal dynamic of Korean Wave (also known as Hallyu) as an online entertainment consumption and emotions experienced in the first five-month period during the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused cities across the globe to regulate restrictions of social distancing and mobility. Previous studies suggest that city lockdowns may lead to public health problems due to restriction on human interaction. This study aims to examine the changing pattern of online entertainment consumption and how it was impacted by consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper uses Google’s trend data to examine the dynamics of search terms and Natural language processing (NLP) model using twitter’s text data to analyse cultural consumption and emotional analysis. The study reveals an increasing trend in search terms related to the Korean Wave during the lockdown. Simultaneously, the text analysis of tweets showed that positive experiences occurred three-fold compared to negative experiences, suggesting happiness and joy were received with the cultural consumption. The study highlights the possibility of employing user-generated data, such as that of Google and Twitter, as an alternative source to understand the behaviour and wellbeing of the urban population for both urban and media studies.