# Semantic Communities and Boundary-Spanning Lyrics in K-pop: A Graph-Based Unsupervised Analysis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.12881 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12881/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 25 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [Efficient Estimation of Word Representations in Vector Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1301.3781/) (2013)
- [UMAP: Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection for Dimension Reduction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03426/) (2018)
- [Universal Sentence Encoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.11175/) (2018)
- [HUMAP: Hierarchical Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.07718/) (2021)
- [SONAR-SLT: Multilingual Sign Language Translation via Language-Agnostic Sentence Embedding Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19398/) (2025)
- [Embedding Graphs as Euclidean kNN-Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.06503/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Attention-Steered Vision-Language Models for Sign Language Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.00235/) (2026)
- [A Computational Framework for Modelling Organisation-Level Semantic Identity from Longitudinal Textual Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.29584/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We examine how lyric representation shapes computational similarity using four 384-dimensional multilingual MiniLM representations of 7,891 K-pop songs by 1,456 artists from charts spanning 2000 to October 2023. Whole-song truncated embeddings provide the strongest standardized separation between neighbouring and random song pairs (1.995), compared with 1.931 for chunked documents, although chunked representations show greater adjusted Rand agreement and line-based representations yield higher modularity. Using whole-song embeddings, we construct a weighted cosine nearest-neighbour graph (k=30). A representative Louvain partition identifies 21 operational communities, without a corresponding robust plateau in the Markov Stability analysis. AI-assisted examination of selected lyrics and terms suggests overlapping patterns of memory, separation, longing, self-reflection, attraction, and performance. Community membership is associated with character-script composition (Cram'er's V=0.294; permutation p=0.001). High-participation songs exhibit broader cross-community connectivity, while participation has weak negative associations with embedding-relative novelty. These findings show how representation choices and textual characteristics influence the network organization of a cultural corpus, subject to limitations from truncation, graph construction, and the absence of independent human semantic validation.