Pattern of Public Opinion Formation on Online news toward a Controvertial Issues: Using Dynamic Time Warping

Abstract

Based on the spiral of silence theory (SOS), this paper attempt to explore how public opinion is formed on online news. For this, patterns of comments of online news with a controversial theme, “increasing medical school quotes,” which attracted people’s attention during July and August 2020 in Korea, was analyzed. After collecting news articles on an Internet portal, Naver, news comments were analyzed and quantified. Then, Dynamic Time Warping technique was implemented to see how majority and minority opinions toward the theme are changed over time. As a result, four patterns of public opinion formation were generated [Contentious type (16.4%), Parallel type (28.6%), Overwhelming type (23.1%), and Gradual gap type (31.9%)]. Among the four clusters, Overwhelming type support SOS theory.