By Peter McFeely, Account Manager
Senior Digital Consultant
Grayling
For most of April and May, the news agenda has been dominated by the
GE – in print, on air and, with the advent of social media
campaigning, online. We at Grayling have been monitoring the online
conversations over the four weeks leading up to the Election and have
compiled an analysis of the whole event.
The Grayling Plugged-in Report: Singapore General Election 2011
assesses the online penetration of five prominent parties, namely the
PAP, WP, NSP, SDP and SPP, establishing who was talking about them,
where, when and in what way.
In brief, key findings include:
Share of voice did not reflect election results :
Opposition parties enjoyed a greater proportion of mentions than they
received votes. Noise doesn’t directly translate into results and does
not account for sentiment nor geographic concentration or spread.
People spent more time criticising the PAP than supporting an opposition party :
The PAP had, by far, the most mentions – but they actually incurred a
very large amount of negative comments. In fact, the number of
negative comments was larger than the number of positive mentions
made regarding any other party.
Results and rallies drove engagement :
Unsurprisingly, the major spike in conversations came on election day
as results were announced. Outside of that, each party enjoyed spikes
when they held major rallies. Large-scale events drove an increase in
online conversations.
Sentiment in the last week reflected actual results :
Positive mentions of the WP peaked during week 4 while negative
mentions of the PAP were also at one of their highest points, in line
with the PAP/WP swing in seats won vs 2006. Positive conversation
around the other opposition parties peaked in weeks 2 and 3, with
their challenge fading by week 4.
In fact, SPP was mentioned negatively more often than positively in
the final week,reflecting their decrease in percentage of votes won vs
2006.
Traditional media still starts conversations :
Online sites of traditional news outlets provided the most frequent
mentions of each party. Overall, these mentions were a minority
percentage of total messaging, demonstrating that bloggers and other
influencers develop and expand conversations originally started by
news sources.
Please find the full report in this link below for more details.
http://www.slideshare.net/mcfeelyp/grayling-pluggedin-report-singapore-general-election-2011-7939870
About Grayling :
Grayling is a global Public Relations, Public Affairs, Investor
Relations and Events consultancy with offices in 70 locations in 40
countries. Grayling is part of Huntsworth plc.
