NKIS 국가정책연구포털

국문초록

영문초록

• Abstract
  
  While South Korea has experienced the lowest total fertility rate among OECD countries, the rate rebounded to 0.75 in 2024, marking the first increase in nine years. Against this backdrop, this study examines how external shocks reshape the discourse surrounding childbirth by analyzing semantic shifts in birth-related keywords during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using text data collected from major South Korean online platforms between 2016 and April 2025, the study applies a domain-adapted KLUE-BERT model and a semantic axis framework to trace changes in the positioning of fertility-related terms along a micro–macro dimension. The results show that the pandemic acted as a critical shock that temporarily shifted childbirth discourse toward macro-level, institutional framing, followed by a post-pandemic reorientation toward personal and experiential narratives. By empirically linking semantic framing to fertility trends, this study provides a methodological reference for analyzing policy communication and highlights the importance of discourse dynamics in understanding demographic change.

목차

• 1. Introduction
  
  2. Related Work
  2.1 Demographic Responses to External Shocks
  2.2 Interplay between Individual Experiences and Social Structures
  2.3 Quantifying Semantics via Axis Projection
  
  3. Data
  3.1 Collected Social Media Data
  3.2 Keyword Selection Procedure
  3.3 Extracting Platform-Specific Jargon
  
  4. Methodology
  4.1 Building the Finetuned Birth-KLUE Embedding Model
  4.1.1 Keyword-Centric Masking Strategy
  4.2 Constructing the Micro–Macro Semantic Axis
  4.2.1 Selection of Reference Chunks
  4.2.2 Embedding Reference Chunks into the Model
  4.3 Tracking Analysis of Semantic Changes Over Time
  4.4 Regression Framework: From Semantic Projections to Birth Outcomes
  
  5. Results
  5.1 Micro–Macro Spectrum of Keywords
  5.2 Shock–Recovery Patterns of Semantic Shift
  5.3 Keyword-Based Qualitative Analysis by Quadrant
  5.4 Regression Results: From Semantic Framing to Birth Outcomes
  
  6. Discussion and Conclusion
  
  References
  
  Appendix