Trend Analysis of News Articles on Active Seniors' Exercise in an Aged Society Using LDA Topic Modeling

This study aims to identify social issues and trends related to exercise and sports activities of active seniors during an aged society. For this purpose, the BigKinds database of the Korea Press Foundation was utilized to collect relevant newspaper articles published between January 2018 and October 2024 using the keywords ‘active senior + exercise’ and ‘active senior + sports.’ Out of the initially collected 668 articles, 382 were excluded due to duplication or low relevance, resulting in 286 articles used for analysis. The R program was used to conduct keyword frequency analysis, TF-IDF, LDA modeling, and PCA analysis. The analysis revealed five topics: ‘customized service provision,’ ‘housing services for an aging society,’ ‘consumption and leisure trends,’ ‘wellness and health management measures,’ and ‘sports activities and event participation.’ Among these, two pairs of topics showed strong correlations: ‘customized service provision’ with ‘consumption and leisure trends,’ and ‘housing services for an aging society’ with ‘wellness and health management measures.’ In contrast, ‘sports activities and event participation’ demonstrated independent characteristics from the other topics. This study provides valuable implications for the development of customized services for active seniors, the advancement of industries related to aging, and the establishment of relevant policies.