The Korea Local Administration Review

Policy issues in a local election have been studied in terms of pledgeanalysis and pledge classification based on Peterson’s policy classification.With respect to compensating weakness of previous research, this study plansto reveal dynamics of policy issues that have appeared in the media duringsix-months using contents and text network analysis. The result shows thatpolicy issues in local election focus on social welfare, education, and regionaldevelopment. The result also demonstrates that extant policy issues do notdisappear altogether in spite of the tragedy of Sewol Affair. Instead, this studyfinds that policy issues have dramatically changed, inherent policy issues(transportation and education still exist, and the ruling party leads policy issuesduring election period. This study makes a contribution to focus the trend ofpolicy issues in local election period using text network analysis, instead of, ananalysis of polling rate and pledges in a specific policy area.
□ Keywords: Local Election, Political Issue, Election Pledges, Network Analysis