A Study on the Social Acceptance Process of Kiosk Innovation: A Discourse Analysis based on the Diffusion of Innovations Theory

This study analyzes how the term “kiosk” has been perceived, constructed, and socially legitimized in Korean media discourse from 1998 to 2024, drawing on Everett M. Rogers’s Diffusion of Innovations Theory (IDT), particularly its innovation-decision process model. Using the news big-data analysis platform BigKinds, keyword data from 84 news outlets were collected and analyzed through TF-IDF–based frequency and weighted keyword analysis. The results were categorized into three chronological phases according to the evolution of discourse: (1) 1998–2002, (2) 2003–2019, and (3) 2020–2024. These phases were then mapped onto Rogers’s five stages of innovation diffusion—knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation—to reconstruct the discursive structure surrounding kiosk innovation. The analysis found that the first phase (1998–2002) corresponded to the knowledge stage, during which the public was introduced to the concept of kiosks and formed awareness-knowledge of the innovation. The second phase (2003–2019) reflected the decision and implementation stages, characterized by the active adoption, industrial utilization, and specialization of kiosk technologies. The third phase (2020–2024) corresponded to the confirmation stage, in which the social consequences and inclusiveness of kiosk innovation were critically evaluated. This phase was marked by the identification of digital inequality and institutional interventions—such as education and support—targeting vulnerable groups, particularly the elderly and persons with disabilities. This research holds academic significance in that it reconstructs the process of innovation diffusion as a social and discursive phenomenon through collective texts (news media), rather than as an individual behavioral process. While previous studies on diffusion primarily focused on individual or group adoption behaviors, this study emphasizes the role of the communication channel by tracing the evolution of kiosk-related discourse over time. Ultimately, it demonstrates that mass media functions as a core agent in forming and legitimizing social knowledge and expectations regarding technological innovation.