GE14: Sheer lucky coincidences or brilliant yet subtle social media strategising by PH? : Page 2 of 4

 

 

GE14: Sheer lucky coincidences or brilliant yet subtle social media strategising by PH? : Page 2 of 4

What’s Your Campaign Story?

Having a fairly dormant social media presence pre-GE14, BN developed a campaign theme of accelerating the development of the nation via Rakyat-driven manifesto pillars (i.e., Affordable Housing, Youth Development, Digital Enhancement, etc). While this is a solid campaign story for any run-of-the-mill coalition party, the first mistake of the BN Election Engine was that they did not consider the legacy that BN has engineered. A coalition party that has remained in power for so long needed a more impactful and game-changing ideation that would have reassured the Rakyat, that they should be voted for again.

The second mistake that BN may have made in their election engine is to build the brand story on the Chairman of the BN coalition. Conditional on the thought process that this was a conscious decision made by the BN coalition to revert the ground sentiment, which was unfortunately built around the caretaker PM and BN Coalition Chairman, the coalition unintentionally created a sustained, steady preservation of the negative sentiment without any active efforts to address it. This was evident via the Keywords Analysis that we ran on all three of our renditions, where the positive sentiment from BN were extract verbatim from press releases and manifesto content from the BN Coalition Leadership, while the negative sentiment for the BN Coalition consistently picked up keywords and themes that were from issues and speculations long before the announcement of the Parliament dissolution.

On the complete opposite of the spectrum, the PH coalition component parties each had their own campaign stories, values and key sentiments that worked for the core of the party and its supporters. This would have been a complete disaster for the coalition if the component parties stayed detached and independent in terms of their campaign stories. However, the inability to register certain component parties and the announcement of all component parties to be represented by the Keadilan emblem during campaigning and voting, inadvertently created a whole new wave of emotions – Unification for Hope. Supporters were stewing up negative emotions against the BN Coalition with keywords like “bendera (flag), ROS (Registrar of Societies), diturunkan (lowered)” appearing in our analysis, while words like “undi (vote), change, pledged, Negaraku (my country)” were coming up strong in support for the PH Coalition.

Be it engineered, sinisterly executed or mere incidents of pure chance, the incidents of inability to register a component party, selective removal of PH campaign flags, and even the sudden rulings by the Election Committee on certain regulations pertaining to campaign banners, created the perfect underdog story where sentiment was going strong and simmering to a boil on 9th May 2018. The selfless persona of the PH Coalition leaders willing to set aside their respective party agendas and focus on the “Save the Nation” mission for Malaysia effectively put them on a fast-track to conquering Putrajaya.

On the other hand, GS, choosing to focus on its core voter demographic, set off their campaign trails by offering their name as a “more passive alternative for change” which promised to be less radical than the image built for the PH Coalition. While these elements were not necessarily picked up actively in the Sentiment Analysis, a deeper-look into the themes of the Twitter elements that did contain GS consistently portrayed them as “the other party”. Not the perfect image for a vocal opposition front protecting the needs of the Rakyat but ideal enough for a party calling to preserve the existing harmonious environment of peace while still bringing changes. It was a successful campaign position for PAS, particularly in Kelantan and Terengganu that hold the lowest Broadband Penetration Rate per 100 inhabitants in West Malaysia (released for Q4 2017, by MCMC) at 75.7% and 81.9% respectively and.

Next Page: Significance of the 'Final Battle Cry'

 

 
Keyword(s) :
 
Author Name :
 
Download Digerati50 2020-2021 PDF

Digerati50 2020-2021

Get and download a digital copy of Digerati50 2020-2021