Himpunan Kebangkitan Rakyat #KL112 Geo-located Sentiment Analysis

Himpunan Kebangkitan Rakyat (People’s Uprising Rally / #KL112) was a protest rally held at Stadium Merdeka, Kuala Lumpur on January 12th, 2012. It was organised by Pakatan Rakyat (PR) and various NGOs.

At its peak the crowd is estimated to have been between 63,976 – 78,193 people. For details on how this figure was calculated please read this post.

The purpose of this report is to show:

• Where Twitter users in Malaysia are concentrated
• How many of them tweeted about the event
• Where positive / neutral / negative sentiment was concentrated
• Which areas were devoid of users tweeting about the event

We collected 103,343 tweets from 25,901 users tweeting about the event. A detailed analysis of that along with a comparison with Bersih 2 and Bersih 3 will come in a future report.

In addition to collecting tweets about the event, we also collected geo-located tweets from Malaysia. This was to show areas where Twitter users were concentrated, and visualise the percentage of them tweeting about the event. From our experience 5% -10% of Twitter users use geo-located tweets.

We ran an opinion-based sentiment analysis on users tweeting about the event, using the same methodology previously used on tweets regarding free education and the abolishment of PTPTN. The methodology is:

BFM Interview: Crowd-counting

BFM recently interviewed us regarding the crowd-counting methodology as part of their ‘The Week in Review’ show. You can listen to the podcast at the link below (opens in a new tab):

http://www.bfm.my/twir-onward-cyber-troopers.html

Timeline (minute:second)

• 0:00 Crowd-counting (Ahmed Kamal – Politweet; Gabey Goh – Editor, Digital News Asia)
• 6:20 Lese Majeste Laws of Thailand
• 11:57 Graffiti Artists in Myanmar
• 16:50 The Phenomenon of Cybertroopers (Tessa Houghton – Asst.Professor in Media & Communication, Nottingham University; Tun Faisal Ismail Aziz – Chairman, UMNO New Media Unit; Praba Ganesan – PKR Social Media Strategist)

Himpunan Kebangkitan Rakyat #KL112 Crowd Estimate

Himpunan Kebangkitan Rakyat (People’s Uprising Rally / #KL112) was a protest rally held at Stadium Merdeka, Kuala Lumpur on January 12^th, 2012. It was organised by Pakatan Rakyat and various NGOs.

At its peak the crowd is estimated to have been between 63,976 – 78,193 people. This number is not expected to be revised, unless some new evidence surfaces to suggest a different crowd size.

Methodology

Photos and videos that showed the size of the crowd were evaluated. These were used to determine the extents of the area covered by the crowd and the crowd density. The area was then refined by removing obstacles and estimating the percentage of space used. A crowd density of 4 – 12 sq.ft. per person was used.

Building the polygons

After initial evaluation of the photos, one was chosen as a reference to build the polygons from. The polygons were then adjusted after evaluating photos and videos. The steps are shown in the diagram below:

1. The original photo
2. Satellite photo, perspective-adjusted
3. The original photo, perspective-adjusted to match the satellite photo
4. The completed polygons on the map

Result

The polygons in the map below shows the extents of the crowd, divided into different zones. The total space covered by the polygons is 456,627.05 sq. ft. The space taken up by the crowd is 275,532.03 sq. ft. These measurements do not include the stadium seating.

The estimated crowd in each zone is:

A = 20,122 people

B = 1,188 people

C = 8,652 people

D = 2,474 people

E = 7,428 people

F = 1,221 people

Stadium seating = 30,000 people

Total = 71,085 people

Margin of error is +/- 10%.

The estimated size of the crowd is 63,976 – 78,193 people.