TV webpage network analysis: Focused on the analysis of ABC, BBC, NHK, and KBS' hyperlink structures

This paper explores the structures of websites hyperlinked to the official home pages of international terrestrial TV networks; ABC, BBC, NHK, and KBS were visualized to analyze the hyperlink network structures of individual TV networks to examine the connection relations among the TV networks. The data were collected a total of 4378 data collected on December 12, 2015 through Voson site and were analyzed based on NodeXL. The results shows that first, NHK TV network showed more related websites than BBC and demonstrated that it has a good network structure at a quite high level. Second, ABC TV network showed the largest effect because it had the largest number of out-links. Third, BBC and NHK were quite closely related to each other overcoming the long geographic distance and cultural differences between them so that both TV networks could be believed to be progressive and open. On the contrary, ABC and KBS were relatively conservative. Fourth, on comprehensively reviewing the `category point' combination chart drawn, it could be seen that the types of websites hyperlinked to the official home page of NHK were relatively the most diverse. Fifth, the shortest distance between a website type and a TV network means that this TV network has a larger number of that type of websites than other TV networks. This information may enable Internet users to efficiently select TV network home pages according to the types of information that they want to find out.