Online News-Based Economic Sentiment Index

The accurate prediction of industry trends has become increasingly challenging because of unforeseen events. To address this challenge, this study proposes a deep learning approach to generate an economic sentiment index by integrating Natural Language Processing (NLP) models and image-clustering techniques. We first employ sampling techniques to create standardized online news datasets. Feature engineering techniques from the Korean Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (KoBERT) model are then used to generate relevance and sentiment scores for the textual data. Further, to enhance visualization and clustering, we transform the textual data into joint plot images, which are grouped into distinct clusters based on news categories. Finally, using Multi-criteria Decision Analysis, the various scores and cluster information are synthesized to generate the final economic sentiment index. This approach improves visualization and enhances the interpretability of the generated index. The proposed algorithm is applied to construct a new economic sentiment index for the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry in South Korea.