Who is Winning Singapore #GE2015 on Instagram?

Edwin Tam
11 Sep 2015

It always starts with an interesting question.

For Singapore's #GE2015/rally/"chut" pattern*/election, it was:

"Who's winning the election
on Instagram?" 

 

And that question stemmed from kopi-O discussion:

"Dey, did you know that our politicians are more active on Instagram than Twitter?" 

"Hmmm...."

It turned into a post by our friends at One Fifty Seven (Will Instagram displace Twitter as the choice of candidates?). And since Twitter mentions and Facebook posts and shares were covered by Social Media gurus and local dailies, I decided to take the not-so-trodden path to find what and where people are saying on Instagram.


 

The Singapore #GE2015 Instagram Map

This visualisation of Instagram Posts maps what people say to where they've said it:

  1. Coloured dots correspond to posts about a political party or just General Election
  2. Yellow circles indicate the number of LIKES that each post is getting. The bigger the circle, the more likes it has.
  3. Red areas within black boundaries indicate GRCs and SMCs

Hover over the circles or dots to get some quickie info, or click on them to read the post captions. 

Click on this link if the above map isn't rocking for you
GE 2015 Instagram Map (25 Aug to 9 Sep) on CartoDB 

 

Obviously this map doesn't capture all posts, as it can only get posts with public longitude and latitude data. Regardless it works out to a sizeable amount of data:

31% of all posts on the General Election are on this map
That's 3,066 mappable posts out of 9,584 General Election posts!

 

So...have a go at the Instagram Map, and tell me what you think. I'll be back with another post on Insta-insights after I've submitted my vote. Happy polling, folks! 

 

[update:]

* Chut Pattern: Singlish >> "describes someone revealing himself to be the swine he really is" (Talking Cock)


 

Mapping Our Data Analysis Method

#GE2015 Instagram Sentiment Analysis 

We trawled Instagram hashtags such as: sgelections2015, ge2015, sgelections,  sgelection,  generalelection2015 (links at bottom of post). Cleaned up the data and ran it through our brand new key phrase analyser to find out:

  1. Is this post talking about a party or otherwise?
    People's Action Party (PAP), Worker's Party (WP), some other party or the General Elections?
    The more that's being said about a party, the more it indicates interest. 
  2. Who's doing the talking?
    Does this post belong to a political party member or is it an instagrammer?
    Posts from outside a political party is always more important than from within the party.
  3. How many Likes and Comments are they getting?
    Engagement and spread. Well-liked posts mean more eyeballs.

The results are described, analysed, pivoted and mapped. 

I'll go in depth about how it's done in another post at a later date.

Instagram Hashtags: sgelections2015ge2015sgelectionssgelectiongeneralelection2015

 



More insights
Modern websites need modern browsers

To enjoy the full experience, please upgrade your browser

Try this one