2017 Volume 44 Issue 1 Pages 1-15
In order to explore differences in news frames regarding controversial historical and territorial issues between Japan and Korea, the contents of four Japanese and Korean newspapers were analyzed by using topic models. Specifically, all the articles on the first page of Yomiuri, Asahi, Donga, and Hankyoreh newspapers during the two years from 2012 to 2013 were analyzed using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). Results indicated that in Japanese newspapers, the territorial issue related to Takeshima (Dokto) was framed as a part of a broader international security topic, whereas in Korean newspapers it was more closely associated with historical issues that are unique to the relationship between Japan and Korea. The issue of comfort women was framed in Japanese newspapers as an aspect of domestic politics surrounding the statements made by Toru Hashimoto, the former mayor of Osaka city, whereas in Korean newspapers, it was more distinctively framed as a historical issue. The potential consequences of different news framing between Japan and Korea, as well as the usefulness of using LDA for content analysis are discussed.
