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200,000 #GE2015 conversations on Twitter

SINGAPORE — The General Election proved to be the hot button topic on Twitter, with a total of 200,000 conversations on the social media platform during the hustings (as at midnight on Sept 11), and 110,000 conversations on Polling Day itself through to the Saturday morning (Sept 12).

PM Lee Hsien Loong celebrates with supporters at Toa Payoh stadium on Sept 12, 2015. Photo: Ray Chua

PM Lee Hsien Loong celebrates with supporters at Toa Payoh stadium on Sept 12, 2015. Photo: Ray Chua

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SINGAPORE — The General Election proved to be the hot button topic on Twitter, with a total of 200,000 conversations on the social media platform during the hustings (as at midnight on Sept 11), and 110,000 conversations on Polling Day itself through to the Saturday morning (Sept 12).

According to Twitter, activity in twittersphere spiked during the campaign rallies, both at night and during the lunchtime rallies – there were about 26 tweets per minute at the lunchtime rally on Sept 8. On Polling Day, there was a spike of 330 tweets around the time Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong delivered his thank-you speech to voters at Toa Payoh Stadium.

Mr Rishi Jaitly, Twitter’s vice president of Media Partnerships, Asia Pacific and Middle East, said: “Elections, of course, are a prominent moment, no matter what country you’re in.”

He added that there were some interesting trends in the way Twitter was used by the various political parties.

“The election in 2011 was Singapore’s first social media election,” he elaborated. “The conversation was vibrant but political leaders were just beginning to get into it. Now, you have these leaders using the platform, and the content of Twitter tends to reflect the overall public communications strategy of that particular person or party.

“In this elections, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was very vocal and visible on the platform. He’s at the centre of a lot of conversations about the People’s Action Party (PAP),” Mr Jaitly said.

PM Lee’s number of followers has doubled to about 215,000, since the start of the year.

Mr Dickson Seow, Twitter’s head of Communications, Asia Pacific, said: “(Mr Lee) has done very well and engaged with people thanks to his tweets. It’s not just about politics, it’s personal as well. That really played out really well. I think that’s something that the PAP has learned over the past few years, and how to cultivate that.

“(Mr Lee) is by far the most discussed politician online. So you can say that the PAP’s strategy was to ride on PM Lee. That’s seen both on Twitter and in the real world.”

On the other hand, Mr Jaitly observed that the Workers’ Party (WP) chose to be more focused on their party message on Twitter, while the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) had focused on tweets about their leader Dr Chee Soon Juan, who was the second most discussed political leader of the election. “It’s interesting to see this evolution of political stakeholders’ use of Twitter and how the organisations ensure that their Twitter strategy is in line with their broader strategy.”

Mr Seow added: “In the context of the elections, the leaders know how important (social media) is — they want to have their voice on social media as well.”

Mr Seow also noted how Dr Chee made his presence felt on Twitter through his rally appearances and speeches, which were followed on Twitter. “He’s a good speaker but at the beginning of the campaign he wasn’t in the top ranks. But he has come out of seemingly nowhere and come in at No 2 in the rankings (for the Top 3 Most Mentioned Party Leaders of #GE2015 on Twitter).”

Taking third spot on that ranking was Workers’ Party (WP) chief Low Thia Khiang. WP was also the most discussed political party on Twitter during the campaigning period.

At the start of the campaigning period, WP was 1.4 times more widely discussed than the PAP. But by the end of the campaigning period, the PAP had almost closed the gap on Twitter.

The SDP moved up to the third place in the Top 3 Most Mentioned Political Parties with a strong Twitter reaction for Dr Chee’s first rally speech in 15 years on Sept 3, as well as his lunchtime rally speech on Sept 7.

“We did an internal study and we found that more people come to Twitter because they wanted to see what the different views were,” said Mr Seow. “The users want to get a range of views so that they can make a more informed decision.”

 

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