인터넷의 일상화와 각종 스마트 기기의 보급으로 이용자들로 하여금 실시간 의사소통이 가능하게 하여 기존의 커뮤니케이션 양식이 새롭게 변화되었다. 인터넷을 통한 정보주체의 변화로 인해 데이터는 더욱 방대해져서 빅데이터라 불리는 정보의 초대형화를 야기하였다. 이러한 빅데이터는 사회적 실제를 이해하기 위한 새로운 기회로 여겨지고 있다. 특히 텍스트 마이닝은 비정형 텍스트 데이터를 이용해 패턴을 탐구하여 의미있는 정보를 찾아낸다. 텍스트 데이터는 신문, 도서, 웹, SNS 등 다양한 곳에 존재하기 때문에 데이터의 양이 매우 다양하고 방대하여 사회적 실제를 이해하기 위한 데이터로 적합하다. 본 연구는 한국 최대 인터넷 포털사이트 뉴스의 댓글을 수집하여 2017년 19대 한국 대선을 대상으로 연구를 수행하였다. 대선 선거일 직전 여론조사 공표 금지기간이 포함된 2017년 4월 29일부터 2017년 5월 7일까지 226,447건의 댓글을 수집하여 빈도분석, 연관감성어 분석, 토픽 감성 분석, 후보자 득표율 예측을 수행하였다. 이를 통해 각 후보자들에 대한 이슈를 분석 및 해석하고 득표율을 예측하였다. 분석 결과 뉴스 댓글이 대선 후보들에 대한 이슈를 추적하고 득표율을 예측하기에 효과적인 도구임을 보여주었다. 대선 후보자들은 사회적 여론을 객관적으로 판단하여 선거유세 전략에 반영할 수 있고 유권자들은 각 후보자들에 대한 이슈를 파악하여 투표시 참조할 수 있다. 또한 후보자들이 빅데이터 분석을 참조하여 선거캠페인을 벌인다면 국민들은 자신들이 원하는 바가 후보자들에게 피력, 반영된다는 것을 인지하고 웹상에서 더욱 적극적인 활동을 할 것이다. 이는 국민의 정치 참여 행위로써 사회적 의의가 있다.
With the everyday use of the Internet and the spread of various smart devices, users have been able to communicate in real time and the existing communication style has changed. Due to the change of the information subject by the Internet, data became more massive and caused the very large information called big data. These Big Data are seen as a new opportunity to understand social issues. In particular, text mining explores patterns using unstructured text data to find meaningful information. Since text data exists in various places such as newspaper, book, and web, the amount of data is very diverse and large, so it is suitable for understanding social reality. In recent years, there has been an increasing number of attempts to analyze texts from web such as SNS and blogs where the public can communicate freely. It is recognized as a useful method to grasp public opinion immediately so it can be used for political, social and cultural issue research. Text mining has received much attention in order to investigate the public`s reputation for candidates, and to predict the voting rate instead of the polling. This is because many people question the credibility of the survey. Also, People tend to refuse or reveal their real intention when they are asked to respond to the poll. This study collected comments from the largest Internet portal site in Korea and conducted research on the 19th Korean presidential election in 2017. We collected 226,447 comments from April 29, 2017 to May 7, 2017, which includes the prohibition period of public opinion polls just prior to the presidential election day. We analyzed frequencies, associative emotional words, topic emotions, and candidate voting rates. By frequency analysis, we identified the words that are the most important issues per day. Particularly, according to the result of the presidential debate, it was seen that the candidate who became an issue was located at the top of the frequency analysis. By the analysis of associative emotional words, we were able to identify issues most relevant to each candidate. The topic emotion analysis was used to identify each candidate`s topic and to express the emotions of the public on the topics. Finally, we estimated the voting rate by combining the volume of comments and sentiment score. By doing above, we explored the issues for each candidate and predicted the voting rate. The analysis showed that news comments is an effective tool for tracking the issue of presidential candidates and for predicting the voting rate. Particularly, this study showed issues per day and quantitative index for sentiment. Also it predicted voting rate for each candidate and precisely matched the ranking of the top five candidates. Each candidate will be able to objectively grasp public opinion and reflect it to the election strategy. Candidates can use positive issues more actively on election strategies, and try to correct negative issues. Particularly, candidates should be aware that they can get severe damage to their reputation if they face a moral problem. Voters can objectively look at issues and public opinion about each candidate and make more informed decisions when voting. If they refer to the results of this study before voting, they will be able to see the opinions of the public from the Big Data, and vote for a candidate with a more objective perspective. If the candidates have a campaign with reference to Big Data Analysis, the public will be more active on the web, recognizing that their wants are being reflected. The way of expressing their political views can be done in various web places. This can contribute to the act of political participation by the people.