Twitter Statistics and Crowd Measurement of the Bersih 4 Rally

1. Background

On July 29th Bersih 2.0 announced that a rally entitlted ‘Bersih 4’ would be held on the streets of Kuala Lumpur, Kuching and Kota Kinabalu from August 29th, 2pm to August 30th. The demands of the rally are for Prime Minister Najib Razak to step down and the following institutional reforms to be implemented:

1. Clean Elections
2. Clean Governments
3. Saving Malaysia’s Economy
4. Right to Dissent
5. Strengthening Parliamentary Democracy (added on August 14th)

On August 14th Bersih released a statement adding a demand for a transitional government to be formed after Najib’s resignation. This government would need to implement 10 institutional reforms within the next 18 months to ensure the next General Election would be conducted in a clean, free and fair manner:

1. Reform of electoral system and process
2. Reform of the Election Commission (EC)
3. Separation of Prime Minister and Finance Minister
4. Parliamentary Reform
5. Separation of the functions of Attorney General and Director of Public Prosecution
6. Reform of the MACC
7. Freedom of Information laws
8. Asset declaration by Ministers and senior state officials
9. Abolishment of/Amendment to draconian laws
10. Establishment of the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC)

On August 27th Opposition MPs from PKR, DAP and GHB released a joint statement declaring they would work with BN MPs to form a new government provided that Anwar Ibrahim and other prisoners of conscience be released; and political reforms be the core agenda of the new government.

2. Twitter Statistics

All statistics referring to tweets include retweets unless otherwise stated.

2.1 Basic Stats

111,879 users made 583,338 tweets about Bersih from July 28th – August 30th 2015.

96,890 users made 446,967 tweets about Bersih during the rally period (August 29th – August 30th 2015). In other words, 86.6% of the total users and 76.6% of total tweets were made during the rally.

The chart below shows a comparison in the number of users tweeting about the Bersih 2 (July 2011), Bersih 3 (April 2012) and Bersih 4 (August 2015) rallies in the days leading up to the event.

Analysis of Support for Bersih 4 by Twitter Users in Malaysia

1. Background

On July 29th Bersih 2.0 announced that a rally entitled ‘Bersih 4’ would be held on the streets of Kuala Lumpur, Kuching and Kota Kinabalu from August 29th, 2pm to August 30th. The demands of the rally are for Prime Minister Najib Razak to step down and the following institutional reforms to be implemented:

1. Clean Elections
2. Clean Governments
3. Saving Malaysia’s Economy
4. Right to Dissent
5. Strengthening Parliamentary Democracy (added on August 14th)

On August 14th Bersih released a statement adding a demand for a transitional government to be formed after Najib’s resignation. This government would need to implement 10 institutional reforms within the next 18 months to ensure the next General Election would be conducted in a clean, free and fair manner:

1. Reform of electoral system and process
2. Reform of the Election Commission (EC)
3. Separation of Prime Minister and Finance Minister
4. Parliamentary Reform
5. Separation of the functions of Attorney General and Director of Public Prosecution
6. Reform of the MACC
7. Freedom of Information laws
8. Asset declaration by Ministers and senior state officials
9. Abolishment of/Amendment to draconian laws
10. Establishment of the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC)

On August 27th Opposition MPs from PKR, DAP and GHB released a joint statement declaring they would work with BN MPs to form a new government provided that Anwar Ibrahim and other prisoners of conscience be released; and political reforms be the core agenda of the new government.

2. Our Analysis

We performed opinion-based analysis on 385 users based in Malaysia who tweeted about Bersih 4 and related terms from July 28th – August 25th 2015. The margin of error is +/- 4.99%.

Users were selected based on their tweet content and activity during this period. Sampling was done per-state based on the current estimated user population.

Spammers, news agencies and accounts with automated tweets were not included in the sample.

From this dataset we analysed the individual Twitter user timelines to determine their opinion. This took their tweets, retweets and conversations into account.

Our goal was to gauge public support by Twitter users in Malaysia for the Bersih 4 rally taking place from August 29th – August 30th in Kuala Lumpur.

Based on this analysis we categorised users as belonging to one of the following categories:

1. Support
2. Neutral
3. Don’t Support

These were further divided into the following categories:

1. Support
2. Support (Najib must resign)
3. Neutral
4. Don’t Support (general)
5. Don’t Support (apathy)

The results are shown in the following charts.

Popular Tweets from #RPDM31D #TURUN Protest

A protest rally was held on New Year’s Eve 2013 at Dataran Merdeka, to protest the rising cost of living that is expected to increase further in 2014. Promoters of the event used the hashtags #RPDM31D (that we believe to mean Rakyat Pilih Dataran Merdeka), #RPDM31Dec and #TURUN.

We monitored the event on Twitter and collected 21,923 tweets from 8,600 users. Based on this we compiled the following lists of popular tweets. Ranking was based on the number of users who shared the content on Twitter, and divided between media, links and mentions (tweets without links/media).

Disclaimer: Please remember that the tweets in this list may be misinformation, whether deliberate or unintentional.

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:

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.