Exploring the Online News Trends of the Metaverse in South Korea: A Data-Mining-Driven Semantic Network Analysis

It is presently being questioned whether the metaverse is mere hype or the next transformative vision. It should be examined how the issues associated with the metaverse are being dealt with socially, and accordingly, how the public's interest has changed. This paper aims to explore the metaverse's issues and its rapidly changing trends in South Korea during the pandemic period of 2020-2021, in which the term was very widely used. This study conducted a semantic network analysis using online news big data with a text mining approach to analyze online news content from search engine portals such as Naver, Daum, and Google. TF-IDF, degree centrality, word cloud visualization, and CONCOR analysis were used within the Textom and UCINET6 programs. This research provides valuable insights into how the metaverse is being embraced and discussed within the South Korean context, shedding light on its potential impact and the changing dynamics of public engagement. The results showed that the topics of the public's interests in the metaverse varied in the year 2021 as compared to 2020, and the opportunities and concerns revolving around it are referred to at the same time. The study found that there were significant changes in the subjects that gained public interest in the metaverse between 2020 and 2021. In 2020, the term "Metaverse" became popular in the news due to its increasing popularity in the world of virtual online gaming, particularly among younger populations. This was further accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, resulting in a rise in virtual experiences. In contrast, the year 2021 was marked as the time when the concept of the metaverse gained widespread recognition and established itself as a platform for business and financial opportunities, suggesting the growing interest of older generations in the metaverse.