Home Team Effect and Opinion Network after the Sewol Ferry Disaster: A mixed-method study of the influence of symbol and feedback on liberal versus conservative newspapers’ negative opinions

The Sewol Ferry Disaster, unlike many other disasters, became highly politicized due to the significant number of student victims and the proximity to an election. This politicization highlights the critical role of public opinion in policy change, particularly when negative media opinions pressure politicians to act. While existing theories address the influence of symbols and feedback on opinion, empirical studies examining these effects from different ideological perspectives are lacking. This study aims to fill this gap by investigating how emotional and cognitive symbols and positive and negative feedback influenced the negative opinions expressed by liberal and conservative South Korean newspapers towards President Park Geun-hye's administration following the Sewol Ferry disaster. The study's innovation lies in its use of opinion network analysis to visualize and quantify the flow of opinions, providing a more nuanced understanding of media bias and political discourse.

The study draws on three theoretical frameworks: the Multiple Streams Approach (MSA), Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET), and the Home Team Effect (HTE). MSA explains how policy entrepreneurs use symbols to focus attention and create opportunities for policy change. PET describes how feedback loops maintain policy stability or trigger abrupt changes. HTE posits that individuals tend to favor their own team, potentially biasing their perception of the incumbent government's performance. The literature review highlights the limited empirical research on the combined effects of symbols, feedback, and media ideology in disaster politicization. The lack of studies investigating how these factors differentially affect the opinion of newspapers with contrasting political viewpoints motivates this research.

This study employs a mixed-method approach, combining qualitative and quantitative analysis. The qualitative component involves a case study of the Sewol Ferry disaster, employing content analysis of 424 newspaper editorials (232 from the liberal Hankyoreh and 192 from the conservative Chosun) to identify emotional and cognitive symbols and assess the nature of feedback from the political system. This qualitative analysis is guided by three propositions: (1) the use of symbols to couple the three streams of MSA; (2) the generation of positive and negative feedback by the political system within the PET framework; and (3) the varied responses of liberal versus conservative newspapers in line with the HTE. The quantitative component uses network analysis and opinion mining to create an opinion network, visualizing the relationships and directions of opinions between actors. Multiple regression analyses are then conducted to assess the influence of the identified symbols and feedback on negative opinions towards President Park's administration, controlling for factors such as public opinion of the government and KCG, and economic indicators. The intercoder reliability of the content analysis reached 82.99%.

The qualitative case study reveals that the Sewol Ferry disaster created a policy window, enabling policy entrepreneurs to leverage symbols to blame the Park administration. Emotional symbols, particularly those highlighting the innocence and helplessness of the victims, proved significantly more effective in generating negative opinions than cognitive symbols (e.g., number of bodies recovered). The analysis of feedback showed that the political system's responses, intended as negative feedback, often backfired, generating unintended positive feedback and further fueling negative opinions. The regression analysis confirms that emotional symbols strongly and significantly increased negative opinions towards President Park's administration in both liberal and conservative newspapers. However, the impact of cognitive symbols was not significant. The effect of positive and negative feedback varied depending on the specific policy response and the newspaper's ideological leaning. The liberal newspaper (Hankyoreh) exhibited a much stronger response to both positive and negative feedback than the conservative newspaper (Chosun), consistent with the home team effect. The home team effect is evident in the conservative newspaper's relatively more lenient assessment of the Park administration. Control variables accounted for negative opinions toward the government and KCG as well as economic factors and the partisan shift before and after the June 4th local election. The opinion network visualization provides a clear illustration of the flow of negative opinions and the influence of specific events and actors.

The findings support the hypotheses that symbols and feedback significantly influence negative opinions, but also reveal complexities not fully captured by existing theories. Emotional symbols prove far more potent than cognitive ones, highlighting the importance of affective responses in shaping public opinion during crises. The inconsistent impact of intended negative feedback underscores the limitations of simplistic models of policy response. The clear disparity between liberal and conservative newspapers' responses emphasizes the significant role of media ideology in shaping political discourse, particularly under a conservative administration. The home team effect is robustly supported. The study’s methodology offers a significant advancement, showcasing the potential of opinion network analysis to provide a visually accessible and quantitatively robust approach to understanding media bias and public opinion. By integrating qualitative and quantitative techniques, the study provides more comprehensive insights into the intricacies of disaster politicization and media influence.

This study makes significant contributions by demonstrating the power of emotional symbols in driving negative opinions, highlighting the unpredictable nature of feedback effects in shaping public opinion, and emphasizing the influence of media ideology on the interpretation of political events. The innovative use of opinion network analysis allows for a more nuanced and visual understanding of political discourse. Future research could extend this methodology to other media types and explore the generalizability of these findings to other countries and political contexts. Investigating the underlying mechanisms of how positive and negative feedback can be reliably distinguished and their differing effects across various political systems would also enrich this field of study.

The study's focus on two newspapers in South Korea limits the generalizability of the findings to other contexts. The reliance on editorials may not fully capture the diversity of opinions within the newspapers. The time frame of the study, limited to the year following the disaster, may not fully capture the long-term impacts of the event. Future research should consider broader media analysis, longer timeframes, and comparative studies across various political systems to address these limitations.