구조적 토픽 모델링을 활용한 엘리트 스포츠정책의 변화와 언론 동향 분석

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study empirically investigated the longitudinal transformation of elite sports policy discourse in South Korea by applying Structural Topic Modeling (STM) to a corpus of 563 newspaper articles published between 1990 and 2024. Eleven core discourse topics were identified through rigorous text preprocessing and probabilistic topic extraction, followed by a quantitative analysis of topic prevalence across time. The findings revealed that discourses surrounding the promotion of public health through grassroots sports, organizational conflicts within the Korea Sports governance structure, and systemic issues of violence and human rights violations in the athletic domain have consistently dominated the elite sports policy narrative. Meanwhile, topics such as athletic admission fraud, student-athlete academic rights, and military service exemption controversies emerged predominantly in reaction to salient societal events. The study quantitatively demonstrated a paradigmatic shift from performance-oriented policy frameworks to value-oriented approaches emphasizing ethics, welfare, and athlete rights. Furthermore, the role of mass media as an active agenda-setter and discourse constructor was critically examined. Methodologically, the study underscored the efficacy of STM in capturing latent structures within large-scale unstructured textual data and contributed to the advancement of interdisciplinary research at the nexus of sport policy, communication studies, and political science. Practically, the findings offered meaningful insights for policymakers seeking to formulate integrative, evidence-based, and socially responsive elite sports policies that reflect evolving public discourse and normative expectations.