News coverage of housing policies follows power law distributions as it reflects public sentiment

Housing policies elicit a wide range of reactions across the population, and media coverage can serve as proxy for gauging how the public responds to such policies. Few researchers, however, have incorporated sentiment in news articles into a formal mathematical framework. One framework, called the controlled growth process, looks to quantify this volatile back-and-forth.

An et al. employed this model to quantitatively link public sentiment to the structure of new articles covering housing policies in three major South Korean media outlets. Their model analyzed the power law of word frequencies and text cohesion, which they correlated to shifts in housing policy across two different presidential administrations in South Korea, one known for its stable approach to housing and another less stable.

The findings are poised to help regulators and policymakers better assess policies with far-reaching complex outcomes.

“The key novelty of our work lies in providing a parsimonious theoretical model that quantifies the structural characteristics of housing policy-related news articles and explains news sentiment using theory-implied parameters,” said author Kwangwon Anh. “Specifically, we show that changes in sentiment levels and their variability originate from structural features such as scaling exponent and text cohesion in the documents.”

A power law distribution applies to word frequencies from the articles, mimicking patterns seen in literature. When housing policies were less stable, a more negative tone in the coverage resulted in articles that were less cohesive and exhibited a steeper distribution in most frequent words.

The group’s work shows links between how complex communication systems behave and attitudes toward policies, potentially before public sentiment about the policies becomes clear.

They next look to extend their framework to monetary policy by examining news and communications surrounding the U.S. Federal Open Market Committee.

Source: “Quantitative structure and sentiment of news articles on housing policies,” by Sihyun An, Seongeun Bae, Ganghyeok Lee, and Kwangwon Ahn, Chaos (2026). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0310060 .