Analyzing news and research articles about energy storage systems in South Korea based on network analysis and topic modeling

Abstract

The low adoption of energy storage systems (ESS) in South Korea reveals gaps among stakeholders such as government, industry, and academia, and between public and academic perspectives. This study analyzes 4,168 news articles and 9,120 research articles related to ESS in South Korea from 2010 to 2023, using trend analysis, co-occurrence network analysis, and topic modeling (BERTopic). Trend analysis showed that incentive-based policies significantly increased ESS installations and public interest. News article volume increased by 29.3% annually (2015–2018) with strong incentives, but by only 1.8% (2019–2022) after the reduction of these incentives, indicating that abrupt changes or the elimination of incentives decreased media coverage and slowed market growth. Network analysis revealed the industry sector as the most influential stakeholder in news articles, far exceeding academia with a weighted degree centrality 59 times higher and a betweenness centrality six times higher, reflecting the industry sector’s role in driving ESS-related discourse. Lastly, topic modeling identified media discourse on fire safety, electric vehicles, and recycling, whereas academic research focused on advances in ESS materials and operation systems, particularly for lithium-ion batteries, supercapacitors, and hydrogen or thermal energy storage systems. These findings indicate a misalignment between public concerns (electric vehicles, renewable energy, fire incidents, and waste management) and academic focus (material science and operation of ESS). Based on the results, strategies are proposed for each stakeholder, including maintaining long-term incentive-based policies, diversifying research and development investments for multiple ESS types, and improving communication of academic findings to better align public and academic discourses.