GE2011 hot on the Internet
By Chua Hian Hou
POLITICAL buzz online has spiked sharply in April ahead of the coming polls, with the bulk of the discussion centred on the People's Action Party (PAP), its candidates and its policies.
According to statistics from online monitoring company Brandtology and interactive media firm Tribal DDB, there were 44,000 blog postings, Tweets, and Facebook updates related to the General Election for the first 26 days of April - the day before Nomination Day.
This compares to just 27,000 for the entire month of March.
To compile its data, the two companies run online searches search for keywords related to the 2011 General Election, and assign a score to these words. Brandtology analysts also go through the data to try and pick up sarcasm, which might throw off the software engine.
Unsurprisingly, much of this chatter - 28,600 items or 66 per cent of all the postings for the month of April ? is PAP-related. Of these, 52.8 per cent were rated as positive or very positive, and 25.4 per cent rated either negative or very negative.
By comparison, the Worker's Party (WP) generated much less buzz: just 6,200 comments. Of these, 61.1 per cent were rated positive or very positive, and 16.9 per cent negative or worse.
Of Singapore's seven parties, online users appeared to like Mr Chiam See Tong?s Singapore People's Party best. While there were only 940 comments about his party, 74.8 per cent of these gave the party the thumbs-up, and only 12 per cent the thumbs-down.
One significant statistic is how well the controversial Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), led by Dr Chee Soo Juan, is doing online. It was the worst performing opposition party at the last election in 2006.
With 69.3 per cent of the 3,600 comments rated positive versus 19.8 per cent negative, it is better loved online than the bigger, more established WP.
The change, said an SDP spokesman, was likely a combination of the attractiveness of the party's vision, as well as its compelling, creative use of new media to woo younger, Internet-savvy Singaporeans.
For instance, its campaign video on video-sharing site Youtube, launched just a day ago, has already been viewed more than 20,000 times.
PAP candidate Lim Biow Chuan, who is contesting in the Mountbatten Single Member Constituency, said he was not surprised by the PAP's numbers.
While he is concerned about such sentiments, the nature of the medium makes it 'impossible to say whether it was representative of ground sentiment or of just a segment of the population'.
Brandtology and Tribal DDB concede as much, noting that their statistics 'are only an approximation of the sentiments being expressed'.
'As such it should not be taken as definitive or conclusive.'
Other reasons for the ruling party's performance, said Nanyang Technological University's Assistant Professor Marko Skoric, is that as the incumbent, it is 'an easy target' for criticism.
In any case, he said, the parties' online placing may not correlate to their performance in the polls.
'People might say bad things about the PAP and still vote for it,' he noted.
SDP's spokesman too, while optimistic that the party's success online would bode well for it performance this election, recognised this point, noting how British singer Susan Boyle's stunning online popularity failed to translate into commercial success.
This, he said, was 'testament of the difference between online sentiment and actual actions on the ground ?That's the reality of it'.
