A Study on the Restructuring of Discourse Following the Institutionalization of Webtoons: Focusing on the Revision of the PROMOTION OF CARTOONS ACT

This study examines how the legalization of webtoons, following the revision of the PROMOTION OF CARTOONS ACT, has influenced the structure of social discourse. Despite their rapid growth, webtoons had not been formally defined in law before the revision. Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), this study analyzes news articles published before and after the revision and interprets the results from the perspective of discourse institutionalism. The findings reveal that, after legalization, the discourse became consolidated and reorganized around core themes such as “industrial infrastructure,” “global markets,” and “IP utilization,” as new discourses, including those concerning the influence and controversies surrounding webtoon artists, also emerged. In addition, the discourse on institutional improvement tended to shift toward a focus on industrial promotion. These results suggest that institutional change plays a significant role in shaping and restructuring discourse, underscoring the importance of considering social discourse in policy-making processes.