Publications

For a full list, please visit my google scholar page

  1. Lee MJ, Lee SY. Labor rights and human rights in the United States: Topic modeling of the news media. In review.

  2. Lee MJ. Insights into mental health and vulnerable communities during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea: Topic modeling of the news media. PLOS (In review).

abstract Long-lasting social distancing measures raise serious concerns for already socially marginalized communities or at high-risk of mental disorders, including senior citizens who live alone, people with disabilities, and low-income families. Given the media’s daily role and exposures in meaning-making, media analysis is a useful approach to understanding patterns in reporting trends and popular topics in public discourse. It is critical for policymakers and public health officials to understand what common topics about marginalized communities are being discussed in the news to identify welfare blind-spots. The goal of the study is to investigate reporting trends and identify topics in the news about depression among vulnerable populations in South Korea, shortly before and during COVID-19 through the latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling method. We collected Korean news articles related to mental health and marginalized communities between January 20, 2019, and January 20, 2021, on the BigKinds database. We used R software for LDA topic modeling and visualized the models through multidimensional scaling to identify overlapping topics and group them under common themes. We identified 412 news reports between January 20, 2019, to January 20, 2021. Results showed that the number of articles related to depression and vulnerable populations increased by three-folds during the COVID-19 pandemic (n=306) between January 21, 2020, and January 20, 2021, compared to articles from 2019 (n=106). In 2020, new top themes emerged, including ‘Theme 1: social welfare programs (therapy support, mask donations) for marginalized communities” (N= 114, 37.25%), “Theme 2: social welfare programs for senior citizens and suicide prevention programs” (N= 72, 23.53%), and “Theme 3: mental health during COVID-19” (N=60, 19.61%). Future studies can examine the relationship between news media and its effect on policy development, as well as critical discourse analysis and sentiment analysis of news articles.


  1. Lee MJ. Media influence on humanitarian interventions: analysis of the Rohingya refugee crisis and international media coverage. Int J Humanitarian Action 6 2021 (20). DOI: 10.1186/s41018-021- 00108-5

link to article

abstract In 2017, the long-festering discriminatory treatment to the Rohingyas in Myanmar, both in law and practice, resulted in the largest cross-border humanitarian crisis in Asia. During the 2016‑2017 Rohingya refugee crisis, the aerial shots of burnt villages and images of people trudging toward the horizon in search of refuge in neighboring nations dominated the Western media. However, for humanitarians, the question of whether the media helps with humanitarian crises remains complicated and unclear. This study examines the effects of media coverage on the Rohingya refugee crisis based on articles from two liberal, elite newspaper sources, The New York Times and The Guardian between 2010 and 2020. The study reveals that the attempts of international pressure to stop the crisis have increased through media coverage and political pressures; however, the number of Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar intensified due to worsening violence and human rights violations committed by the Myanmar army. Findings are discussed using the lens of cultural and ideological context. The study suggests that in Myanmar, where authoritarian military culture is pervasive, there is a limited influence of the international press on the state-sponsored ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya population and questions whether consistent international pressure could have changed the outcome.