IMANI presents EPISODE 3 of Public Understanding and Literacy for Sentiment and Election analysis (PULSE), a fortnightly curated social media-based sentiment analysis report designed to follow the “pulse” of Ghanaians in the run up to the 2024 Election. The analyses are referenced from the following platforms: Facebook, X (formerly,
Twitter), YouTube, Web, TikTok, Instagram, Podcasts and Newsfeeds.
Internet Penetration in Ghana is approximately 50% of total population, or 15.7 million, according to Statista. Of this figure, approximately 6.7 million are on social media, with Ghanaian Facebook accounts alone totaling some 8.7 million users/accounts. About 90% of these social media users are aged between 18 and 64 years of age, meaning that they are all potential and eligible voters.
PULSE monitors primarily the main two contenders, the NPP and the NDC. For this third episode of the series, we are adding the sentiments and influence of the other parties, the PNC, CPP, ACP and PPP, as well as independent candidates like the Butterfly Movement, the New Force and other emerging forces on the landscape.
Information is gathered via main keywords. As news themes change, analysis will be done on these keyword associations. For December and January, the major keywords used were the following for both major contenders. #Bawumia #Mahama #NPP#NDC
Analysis for this third episode covers data collated from January 15, 2024 to February 11, 2024.
In this third episode, several events (including Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s well-advertised February 7 Speech on the Economy) have necessitated the addition of the following keywords: #itispossible and #Bawumiaspeaks. This is to analyze the impact of some of Dr. Bawumia statements made in more recent times as it also directly impacts on his campaign message as a whole.
The sentiments are of three values, i.e. positive, negative and neutral. All these are also collated and analyzed using AI tools to determine the language, tone of comments and tweets, and tone of commentary and posts related to both candidates. Positive: Connotes a positive feeling, sentiment or projects a positive statement, Negative: Connotes a negative feeling, sentiment or projects a negative statement and Neutral: Does not convey any negative or positive feeling or might not be very clear.
We found out that public opinion on the two major candidates, Former President John Mahama and Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia were relatively unchanged up until the recent public address by Dr Mahamudu Bawumia on the 7th of February.
Public negative sentiment has almost tripled on social media since the #BawumiaSpeaks event from 13% to 35%. Before the event, total negative sentiments was 13.22% per every 100 Social Media mentions. After the speech, total negative sentiments had almost doubled to 35.71% per every 100 social media mentions. This is directly in proportion to mentions on social media made after the speech. This means that while there was a spike in commentary about the candidate, over a third of the commentary was negative, as against only just over 9% being positive.
Purely negative sentiment over the period was a mixed bag for the NPP and NDC. Overall, over the period (January 15, 2024 to February 11, 2024.), there were twice more mentions of NPP over NDC. Proportionally however, the NPP had more negative mentions (21.71 per every 100 social media mentions) over the NDC (17.62 per every 100 social media mentions).
Before the 7th February event at the UPSA, the NPP had total positive sentiments of 10.82%. After the speech, NPP’s total positive sentiments had reduced to 9.37%.
Nana Kwame Bediako, aka Cheddar, is the most talked about independent candidate and an emerging third force, based on social media sentiment and engagements.
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IMANI
