The Role of Media in Diffusing Participatory Budgeting: News Coverage Between 1991 and 2022 in Korea Using Topic Modelling

The global diffusion of participatory budgeting (PB) has attracted scholarly attention, particularly regarding how PB is institutionalised across different contexts. This article argues that institutionalisation requires both top-down and bottom-up efforts to introduce and promote PB, with media framing playing a crucial role in shaping how it is presented to the public. Using South Korea as a case study, this article analysed 28,480 news articles mentioning PB from 1991 to 2022, sourced from a digital news archive. A structural topic model was employed to identify major frames and trends in the extensive textual data. The analysis revealed 17 topics, with PB framed as a tool for regeneration and decentralisation strategies, distinct from the original Porto Alegre model. The findings also showed that media frames shifted after PB became mandatory in 2011 and varied between national and local newspapers, reflecting its dynamic nature. This study demonstrates the application of the media framing approach for both single and comparative contexts, offering a valuable framework for advancing research on the global diffusion of PB.