This study examines public perceptions of dementia as constructed in popular media by analyzing large-scale reviews of movies and television dramas. As Korea enters a super-aged society, dementia has become a critical public health and welfare issue, and public views shape early screening, help-seeking, care acceptance, and stigma. Drawing on 94,181 reviews from three major online platforms (Naver Movies, WatchaPedia, CGV), we apply keyword extraction (KeyBERT), LDA topic modeling, and Transformer-based sentiment analysis. Results reveal two predominant themes. A first, “narrative-centered” topic highlights family, memory, affection, and emotional warmth. A second, “acting- and emotion-centered” topic stresses grief, burden, caregiving challenges, and the painful realities of cognitive decline. Sentiment analysis shows predominantly positive sentiment in narrative-centered reviews, whereas emotion-centered reviews display mixed positive and negative emotions. Situating these findings within media framing, agenda-setting, and cultivation theories, we discuss how media narratives simultaneously portray dementia as a compassionate relational journey and as a profound experience of loss and suffering. We then consider implications for reducing dementia-related stigma, designing media-based public education, and fostering more inclusive community environments for people living with dementia, and offer practice and policy recommendations to strengthen dementia awareness and support systems.

Authors:
Kyungwon Kim, Incheon National University, South Korea
Soomin Shin, Korea National University of Transportation, South Korea

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Soomin Shin is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Welfare at Korea National University of Transportation, Chungju, South Korea.

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/soominshin

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