Posts Tagged ‘social media’
Top 30 Most Shared #GE13 Links on Twitter
During Malaysia’s 13th General Election we tracked a number of related political hashtags, as well as mentions of politicians on Twitter. This post lists the most shared website links and domains on Twitter from 20th April 2013 – 6th May 2013, ranked by the number of users sharing each link.
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Written by politweet
October 8, 2013 at 8:38 am
Posted in Social Media
Tagged with #GE13, #PRU13, Barisan Nasional, DAP, General Election, Malaysia, Pakatan Rakyat, PAS, PKR, social media, Twitter
Coverage: (Yahoo News) How is social media affecting the 13th Malaysian general elections?
Published on May 1st, 2013 (link to original story) (Indonesian version)
by Susan Tam
Malaysia’s political landscape is facing one of the most fiercely contested elections in history, and you’re able to witness this through the displays of hundreds of flags, buntings and banners as well as from the noisy ceramahs of the various parties vying for your vote. Well, the ‘noise’ levels on cyberspace similarly, has gone up with the rise of social media usage. We decided to find out what it all means by having a chat with social media research firm, Politweet.
From 2,400 people tweeting about politicians in 2010 to 450,000 users chatting about politics on Twitter, three years later.
That is how much Malaysia’s Twitter base has grown, reflecting how much the interest in politics has grown too.
We spoke to Politweet’s Ahmed Kamal to find out if the noise being made on social media should matter in the upcoming elections. Politweet is a non-partisan research company that specialises in the analysis of interactions of Malaysians using social media. One of the goals of the firm is to develop a set of tools for other researchers and journalists to analyse social media.
“The social media usage has definitely increased. We have one to two million Twitter users in Malaysia and over 13 million Facebook users, with over nine million of those above 21 years old.
“In 2008, people mainly turned to blogs for political information. Today the conversation seems to have moved to Facebook and Twitter.”
Seeing this is a technological age, and that more people are getting connected, it’s a no-brainer that more Malaysians have created Twitter or Facebook accounts so they could keep up with the trends. But what has that done for political parties, particularly during hot election campaign periods?
Ahmed, in his research, finds that like its political rival, BN is making use of Facebook and Twitter in its political campaigns. The ‘problem’ though, lies in how they are using it.
“You don’t have many supporters that are having conversations with users and trying to build up that rapport (with users) to convince them to switch over to your side. Instead they are trying to employ methods, like flooding the channels with links to articles or blogs or news about what BN politicians are doing.”
That is a different style to how PR is using these tools to connect to their constituents.
“Maybe they don’t have as many paid people doing it, but whatever (PR) supporters they do have, they are usually strong and they will invest time in conversations that help to change people’s minds.”
He is certain of the fact that BN and PR use this new medium differently in their efforts to spread their political messages, which affects the results of the research on social media.
But who is winning this battle?
Ahmed does not even see an even playing field to begin with, for these two alliances.
“It is very hard to measure the competition between PR and BN. Based on the tweet levels (of both coalitions), BN does not seem to be trying very hard.”
Normally, in political campaigns, BN would lead PR by big margins in terms of mentions. But the results this time indicate both alliances are close to each other.
“It does give me the impression that they (BN) have shifted their attention towards traditional media instead of social media.”
There is a sense that BN could be falling back on the ‘old’ media or traditional media to push their messages, which is something that Ahmed did expect.
With close to 10 million Facebook users possibly becoming first time voters on May 5, we wanted to find out if this was a wise strategy.
Ahmed feels BN isn’t pushing social media as ‘hard as they could’, and people can see their messages through the many billboards, buntings and newspaper advertisements displayed across traditional channels. PR does not have the resources to do the same.
“It does seem like a battle between old media and new media, but we won’t know how effective this is until after the elections.”
He was quick to point out as well that being very popular on cyberspace does not necessarily translate into votes for politicians or parties.
Prime Minister Najib Razak trumps Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim in the number of Twitter followers, despite having a larger number of inactive followers or ‘manufactured accounts’.
Based on Politweet’s census done in February, Najib’s has 1.2 million followers, with only 48% being active accounts.
Anwar has 236,000, with a higher percentage of active accounts of 61%.
But if you break down the numbers, Anwar’s genuine 144,000 followers are tiny compared to Najib’s 582,000.
Ahmed Kamal finds that Najib’s popularity is also the driving force behind BN’s overall popularity. PR on the whole has 59% active followers, compared to BN’s 43%. But, if you take Najib out of the equation, it could mean a different scenario.
According to reports, Ahmed Kamal joined PKR in 1999 but was inactive after that year’s elections. He worked for Anwar in 2007 and did some freelance work for PR after March 2008.
He now focuses on remaining non-partisan and began monitoring social media trends in 2009. Politweet’s detailed research can be found here (http://www.politweet.org/site/main.php).
Written by politweet
May 21, 2013 at 4:57 pm
Posted in News Coverage
Tagged with #GE13, #PRU13, General Election, Malaysia, political social media, social media
Facebook Census Update (Jan 2013): Pakatan Rakyat versus Barisan Nasional
In our December 2012 Census of Facebook Users in Malaysia, we included a comparison of likes for Pakatan Rakyat (PR) and Barisan Nasional (BN) for users aged above 21 years old. This did not explicitly include any politicians’ Pages.
We found that:
- PR has more likes than BN in every age group.
- PR has more male and female likes than BN in every age group. However the gap is narrow for female likes, which means BN can overtake PR in likes from potential women voters.
- BN likes have grown at a faster rate than PR in November, narrowing the gap between both coalitions.
- In November- BN’s highest growth was in men aged 21-30 years, while PR’s highest growth was in women aged 21-30 years
On January 1st 2013, we ran another census for PR and BN. We found that:
- PR has more likes than BN in every age group.
- PR has more male and female likes than BN in every age group.
- BN likes grew at a faster rate in December compared to November, for both men and women.
- BN gained more likes than PR in every age category for both men and women.
- PR likes grew at a faster rate in December compared to November, but only for men. For women, PR’s growth rate reduced from 14.98% to 3.29%.
- For women aged 21-30 years, PR growth was 14560 likes in November. In December, PR growth was only 1520 likes. This reduced growth rate applies to all age categories of women.
- In December – BN’s highest growth was in men aged 21-30 years, while PR’s highest growth was in men aged 21-30 years
- The gap for female likes has reduced further, with BN only 2160 likes away from overtaking PR for women aged 21-30 years.
- PR’s fan-base has become more male-dominant, with the male/female ratio shifting from 209:100 to 217:100.
- BN’s fan-base has become less male-dominant, with the male/female ratio shifting from 154:100 to 152:100.
Questions to think about:
- What did PR do in November to gain such a high increase in likes from women?
- What did PR do in December to increase its growth rate in likes from men, but greatly reduce its growth rate in likes from women?
- What did BN do in December to increase its growth rate in likes from both men and women?
Statistics
Barisan Nasional
Total likes: 428,540
Male/female ratio: 152:100
Pakatan Rakyat
Total likes: 606,820
Male/female ratio: 217:100
Graphs
Methodology
Facebook’s advertising tools were used to collect data on the number of likes for each topic. The results are an estimate by Facebook based on the search criteria we used. We found the margin of error to be +/- 0.1%, though this can vary based on the topic.
Written by politweet
January 29, 2013 at 1:06 pm
Posted in Census
Tagged with Barisan Nasional, DAP, Facebook, GERAKAN, Malaysia, MCA, MIC, Pakatan Rakyat, PAS, PKR, politics, social media, UMNO
Census of Facebook Users in Malaysia, Dec 2012
The following is the executive summary, included in the Scribd document above.
Executive Summary
This document describes the population of Facebook users in Malaysia based on public information collected from Facebook. The goal is to provide a point of reference for social media marketing and a report on Malaysian interest in politics.
Personal characteristics and interests in topics such as Pakatan Rakyat (PR), Barisan Nasional(BN), coalition leaders, Bersih, 1Malaysia and both mainstream media (MSM) and online alternative media publications were measured by age group and gender.
Users interested in a topic are considered the fan-base for that topic. Research focused on potential voters (users aged 21 years and above).
Findings
Malaysia has a total population of 13.5 million Facebook users. The population is male-dominant – 53% are male and 47% are female.
Out of the total population, 9 million are potential voters – 54% are male and 46% are female.
Results of the analysis show that men are more interested in politics than women, but the overall population has little interest in politics. Only 8.8% of total potential voters expressed interest in PR and BN parties.
The research drew attention to a possible relationship between the male-female ratios of each topic’s fan-base:
- Female bias was present in the fan-base for Malay-language MSM, Chinese-language MSM.
- Female bias was strongest in the fan-base for 1Malaysia.
- Male bias was present in the fan-base for English-language MSM and Barisan Nasional parties.
- Male bias was strongest in the fan-base for Pakatan Rakyat parties, Bersih and online alternative media.
For female-dominated topics, there is 1Malaysia and Malay-language MSM. The 1Malaysia brand is associated with BN and Malay-language MSM tends to give more coverage to BN parties.
For male-dominated topics, there is PR, Bersih and online alternative media. Bersih is a coalition of non-governmental organisations (NGO) seeking electoral reform. Bersih is strongly supported by PR. Online alternative media tends to give more coverage to PR parties compared to mainstream media.
PR’s fan-base is 1.5 times larger than BN’s fan-base. However the gap between BN and PR is small when it comes to women and PR’s fan-base is more male dominant compared to BN. This means that BN can overtake PR when it comes to potential women voters.
Conclusion
Population growth in November showed that both BN and PR’s fan-base were becoming less male-dominant. However BN started with a more favourable position in terms of gender balance.
Both 1Malaysia and Malay-language MSM have a female-dominant fan-base, which is a good market for BN to draw users from.
PR does not have a female-dominant source to draw from. Bersih and online alternative media are too male-dominant. The main source left to draw from are women who currently do not show an interest in politics, which is a challenge faced by both coalitions.
This places BN in a better position than PR to increase its share of interest from potential women voters.
Written by politweet
January 16, 2013 at 12:54 am
Posted in Census
Tagged with Anwar Ibrahim, Barisan Nasional, census, DAP, Facebook, GERAKAN, Malaysia, MCA, MIC, Najib Razak, Pakatan Rakyat, PAS, PKR, politics, social media, UMNO