News big data analysis of international start-up innovation discourses through topic modelling and network analysis: comparing East Asia and North America

ABSTRACT It is important to examine how start-up innovation is emerging in the information society. The media is a window through which innovation is highlighted in which fields. We conducted a comparative study with North America to comparatively analyze how startup innovation in East Asia appeared. This study used a set of computer analysis methods including Dirichlet-multinomial regression Topic Model and Topic network analysis. News articles from 2000 to 2019 were collected from East Asia and North America and were analysed on the topic of start-ups. The results indicated that the discourse of start-ups from East Asia and North America in the 2000s and 2010s showed distinctly different trends. The East Asia media changed its focus from an innovation economy to an emerging industry: mobility & energy, while the North American media showed a change from revenue sources to the benefit of innovation. In the discourse of start-ups in East Asia, the government-centred innovative economy was emphasised in the 2000s, and expectations for emerging industries such as mobility and energy increased after the 2010s. Meanwhile, in the discourse of start-ups in North America, revenue sources were emphasised in the 2000s, and the proportion of beneficiaries of innovation increased after the 2010s.