Analysis of Issues in Fitness Centers through News Articles before and after the COVID-19 Pandemic in South Korea: Applying Big Data Analysis

Miyoung Roh, Youngchyul Choi and Haewon Park ()
Additional contact information
Miyoung Roh: College of General Education, Kookmin University, 77 Jeongneung-ro, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul 02707, Republic of Korea
Youngchyul Choi: Faculty of Physical Education, Sangji University, 83 Snagjidae-gil, Wonju-si 26339, Republic of Korea
Haewon Park: Department of Physical Education, Chungbuk National University, 1 Chungdae-ro, Seowon-gu, Cheongju 28644, Republic of Korea

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 3, 1-19

Abstract: This study aimed to identify major topics and trends of media reports in news articles related to fitness centers before and after COVID-19 using big data analysis and to suggest future improvements. We collected 20,528 news articles from 2018 to 2019 (pre-COVID-19) and 20,264 news articles from 2020 to 2021 (post-COVID-19) and conducted frequency analysis, topic modeling, and sentiment analysis. The top keywords related to fitness centers were fitness, health, healthcare, and center both before and after COVID-19, but after the outbreak of COVID-19, new keywords emerged, such as digital, COVID-19, indoor, confirmed, platform, and mobile. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, four topics were extracted: COVID-19 and Exercise, Digital Smart Health Care, Health and Beauty, and Indoor Sports Facilities and Quarantine. Sentiment analysis showed that the frequency of negative words increased by approximately three times since the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to COVID-19, the top keywords of the negative data in order were infection, virus, disease, and limit. Based on the identified major issues and trends related to the fitness industry, these results can be used as foundational data for the future planning and policy development of the fitness industry.

Keywords: COVID-19; fitness center; topic modeling; sentiment analysis; media big data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/3/2660/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/3/2660/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:3:p:2660-:d:1054611

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().