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SINGAPORE – Various results of GE2020, such as the loss of Sengkang GRC by the Workers’ Party (WP) and the general turn towards the opposition, could have been less surprising if political parties had paid more attention to the warning signs of the data from social networks. Mr. Chua Chin Hon said.
Chua, the chief data analyst at artificial intelligence solutions company Analytix Labs, said the major parties, the People’s Action Party (PAP), WP, the Progress Party of Singapore (PSP) and the Democratic Party of Singapore (SDP) ), treated social media primarily as distribution channels. for your messages.
They did not use the data from the platforms extensively to test their electoral hypotheses or campaign strategies, he said, adding that this “shoot and forget” approach to social media will prove increasingly costly in future general elections.
Speaking in an online forum hosted by the Institute for Political Studies on Thursday (Oct. 8), he said there were four “missing signals” before Election Day:
1. Desensitization by Covid-19
By Nomination Day on June 30, user interaction with Covid-19 posts on Facebook had plummeted from its peak in April.
“The instinct to ‘run to safety’, if it existed, probably dissipated along the way,” he said, referring to the belief that voters would be more inclined to support headlines during a crisis.
“By the time the hearings were in full swing, the electorate was significantly open to mixed messages.”
2. Incident of Ivan Lim
Former PAP candidate Ivan Lim, 42, who had been walking the ground in the constituency constituency of the Jurong group and was expected to be in the field, withdrew his candidacy after allegations were made about his conduct in work and as a national service commander.
News of his withdrawal broke on June 27, the same day the PAP manifesto was launched.
That day, Facebook posts related to him by seven local outlets had 62,730 user interactions, or nearly nine times more than those at the manifesto launch. The media were: The Straits Times, CNA, Today, Mothership, Lianhe Zaobao, Lianhe Wanbao and Shin Min Daily News.
“Some say that online users will always be drawn to drama and controversy, and the reaction of social media to an electoral manifesto is always low,” Chua said.
“These are fair points. But when there is an engagement gap of this size, it should have sounded some red flags for the PAP that its message on jobs was just not registering with voters as well as it might have thought.”
3. Enthusiasm gap
User interaction with Facebook posts on the PAP’s key jobs message peaked long before Election Day, while the opposition message, denying the PAP a “blank check,” peaked. maximum just in time, Chua said.
The final encouragement came in the form of emotional video appeals from former and current WP bosses Low Thia Khiang and Pritam Singh to Singaporeans to “make your vote count.”
“In contrast, the PAP did not close its campaign on a particularly strong or memorable note. It could have been even lower if it weren’t for the Prime Minister’s Fullerton Rally,” he said.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong held a lunchtime e-rally on July 6 that was streamed live on Facebook and YouTube.
The “Fullerton Rally” is a tradition of the ruling party and was started by the founding party chief and Singapore’s first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, in 1959 to reach out to the workers.
“In the context of US politics, parties always try to close their campaigns on a very emotional level, so that their supporters feel that extra motivation to go out and vote,” Chua said.
While Singapore’s politics is not managed in stages up to that point, he added, it could be something worth considering in the future.
4. Dash surprise
In a sample of 325 Facebook posts analyzed for the Sengkang contest, the WP Sengkang team had around 32,700 Facebook engagements per day during the campaign period, while the PAP team had around 4,200.
Interest peaked after the live television debate between WP Sengkang GRC candidate Jamus Lim and Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan on July 1; and when fellow WP candidate Raeesah Khan was investigated by police less than a week later for her comments online about race and religion.
The findings, Chua said, come with the caveat that not everyone who reacted to WP posts is necessarily Sengkang voters, or even Singaporean, as there are no publicly available tools to analyze Facebook engagement data by geographic region.
“But when the gap is so big, there is no doubt that the WP Sengkang team got a bigger turnout,” he said.
He concluded that while political parties are getting better at producing social media content, most of them are still “scratching the surface” of what modern election campaigns do in terms of data analysis and the use of targeting. social networks.
Having multiple backup plans or alternatives is key, he added.
“You can see in hours, in a day, if one’s message on social media is being tracked.
“When something doesn’t work, the parts have to change quickly. This year, we didn’t see that many parts did when they realized their messages weren’t working.”
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