In the run up to the 2024 General Elections, IMANI presents PULSE, a fortnightly curated social media-based sentiment analysis report designed to follow the “pulse” of Ghanaians

The IMANI Public Understanding and Literacy for Sentiment and Election analysis (PULSE) is to determine the sentiment on social media regarding the major political contenders for the election, as well as influential trends and influencers that are shaping social media discourse. The analyses are referenced from the following platforms:

1. Facebook
2. X (formerly, Twitter)
3. YouTube
4. Web
5. TikTok
6. Podcasts
7. Newsfeeds

PULSE monitors primarily the two main contenders, the NPP and the NDC. For this fifth episode of the series, we are adding the sentiments and influence of the other parties, the PNC, CPP, ACP and PPP, as well as independent candidates like the Butterfly Movement, the New Force and other emerging forces on the landscape.

Information is gathered via main keywords. As news themes change, analysis will be done on these keyword associations.

For March 2024, the major keywords used were the following for both major contenders.

For the other contenders, since the flagbearers are not known, keywords used were as follows:

In this iteration, several other hashtags have emerged with candidate Bawumia’s campaign on social media, including the following:

1. #itispossible
2. #Boldsolutionsforthefuture
3. #empoweringghana

For Candidate Mahama, some of the hashtags that emerged with his campaign are:

1. #24houreconomy
2. #changeiscoming

Quite a few events drew a lot of attention from commenters on social media. A few of these are as follows:

1. The State of the Nation Address (SONA 2024) debate. This had a hashtag called #SONA2024. Its results and effect on sentiments will be outlined later.
2. The launch of the One Student One Tablet

The sentiments are of three values, i.e. positive, negative and neutral. All these are also collated and analyzed to determine the language, tone of comments and tweets, and tone of commentary and posts related to both candidates.

SUMMARY OF REPORT:

• NPP has taken a lead in positive sentiment on the social media posts monitored. The NDC has dropped from 10.22% to 9.50% while the NPP increased marginally to 10.71% from 10.22%.
• Public negative sentiment has significantly dropped for both, with NPP having an almost13% drop in negative sentiment.

RESULTS:

The period under observation for this edition of the report is from the 26^th of February to the 26^th of March 2024

POSITIVE SENTIMENT:

The sentiments of NDC fell from 10.22% to 9.5% over the period. NDC took a marginal hit in its positive sentiments for the period, meaning that with NPP’s relative gain of 10.71% the shift in sentiments is almost of the same magnitude, although NDC’s drop is about 0.2% more. This means that there could be more positive mentions of the NPP on social media than before.

The image below shows the levels of positive sentiment for the NDC and the NPP:

To add a bit more context, the two charts below show those who tend to post influentially positive posts on social media for both NPP and NDC:

Positive Influencers for Candidate Mahama

For Candidate Bawumia:

NEGATIVE SENTIMENT:

Purely negative sentiment over the period decreased for both party candidates. People that spoke of NPP negatively fell by almost 13% (12.89%) from around 30.7% a month earlier to about 17.81%, which is a huge drop in negative sentiments. The NDC also had their sentiments fall albeit about a quarter of the margin of NPP’s fall. This led them to an around 18.64% negative sentiment rate from 21.86% last month.

For the first time since the inception of IMANI PULSE, the NPP has an edge over the NDC in lesser negative sentiments on social media.

Events

Several mentions have attributed to some positivity for both parties and less negativity. The launch of the One Student One Tablet Smart Schools initiative triggered a lot of mentions. There was a spike in mentions due to fulfillment of Bawumia’s promise of 1 student one Tablet generating buzz on TikTok with hashtags #itispossible, #Boldsolutionsforthefuture and #Bawumia2024.

Another spike in mentions due to Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the 2024 NPP Presidential Candidate, engaging with traders in Sunyani, Bono Region, alongside popular hashtags #Bawumia2024 and #itispossible.

The mentions that had the most extensive reach came from: tiktok.com (authors: officialutvghana), youtube.com (authors: Magraheb TV).

For Candidate Mahama, on March 07, there was a walk and a dance challenge that led to massive engagement to the tune of around 243,000. Additionally, a controversial event around the pronouncements of Dr. Kwesi Ahwoi, one of the main elders of the NDC party, caused a spike in mentions on the 25^th of March 2024.

MENTIONS AND REACH

NPP still leads in mentions on social media. As mentioned earlier, the two major events that triggered mentions was Dr Bawumia’s engagement with traders in the Bono Region as well as the One student One Tablet leading to a lot of mentions and social media/news reach.

For example, the quote by Hajia Ayamba gave a lot of sentiment related mentions and engagement on social media, leading to a huge singular social reach in favor of Candidate Mahama.

The hashtag #itispossible is probably NPP’s most powerful hashtag with engagements and allied hashtags as follows:

The level or social media reach with relation to this hashtag is the biggest driver of positive mentions for the NPP Presidential candidate.

HEAD-TO-HEAD

This month, an almost comparative sample of both candidates was taken to ensure a more granular comparison of metrics with relation to mentions and engagement. This is also because additional datasets were available due to improved and increased mentions from the Mahama campaign, allowing for more mentions to be sampled.

People are also being more responsive to party related events and several issues will be coming up in future sentiment analyses, where sentiments towards specific issues will be analyzed to see if they have bearings on overall sentiment. These will make for more interesting reading of the space.

This reflects NPP’s continued dominance of headspace on social media, interactions and discussions.

Interestingly however, it seems NDC’s social media reach has also improved with even with less direct mentions, while the Advertising Revenue Equivalent also shows that a lot of content is being generated and engaged with among NDC related issues.

This shows that NDC related issues are also gaining a lot of traction on social media and also non-social media websites and cyberspace.

ASSOCIATED KEYWORDS AND HASHTAGS

Associated Keywords related to the campaigns as a world cloud have also been gathered. For the purposes of education, this is a set of curated words that are closely associated with and added to posts and comments about the candidates.

For Candidate Mahama, the following are the major keywords:

For context, the Hashtag #24houreconomy clearly dominates Candidate Mahama’s social media commentary. Also, walks done by Mahama as well as a dance competition generated a lot of social media attention and engagement for the NDC spreading its mentions in video based social media like YouTube and TikTok.

For Candidate Bawumia, the following are the major keywords:

The key standout here is that the Bawumia campaign on social media has already began converging around key hashtags and mentions, notably #boldsolutionsforthefuture, #itispossible, #empoweringghana and #buildingthefuture.

The stage is thus set for more interesting engagements in the coming months and how they shape the social media discussions of both parties.

GUIDE TO SENTIMENT ANALYSIS:

Mentions: Number of times the name has been mentioned within the time period.

Social Media Mentions: Number of times the name has been mentioned on social media platforms.

Non-Social Mentions: Number of times the name has been mentioned on other websites.

Estimated Social Media Reach: Estimated number of people that have seen the mentions on social media.

Non-Social Reach: Estimated number of impressions that have seen the mentions on non-social media sites and websites (eg News Websites, etc).

Social Media Interactions: Total number of interactions generated with comments and threads in social media.

User Generated Content: Total number of interactions generated from mentions on social media and other forums, blogs etc.

Social Media Likes: Number of Likes of social media mentions found.

Videos Incl Tik Tok: Number of videos with mentions of the keywords on Tik Tok.

Positive Mentions: Number of threads/mentions with potentially positive sentiment.

Negative Mentions: Number of threads/mentions with potentially negative sentiment.

AVE: Advertising Value Equivalent: An estimated value of what the total cost will be if all the mentions were paid for.

Hashtags: a word or phrase preceded by a hash sign (#), used on social media sites and applications, especially Twitter, to identify digital content on a specific topic.

SPECIAL MENTIONS AND SEGMENTATION:

Other Contenders:

Here the Social Media Reach of other contenders are examined. Mentions for most of the actors in this space still remain negligible compared to the top two.

The independent hopeful Nana Kwame Bediako still remains the most talked about or dominant in terms of social media attention. His social media following has grown massively as well as the frequency and length of engagement due to his recent listening tour and related media interviews, which puts him literally as the most visible force among the other contenders.

His main Hashtag, #thenewforce, has garnered many mentions and positive sentiments of just over 50% of all related mentions, while negative sentiment is around 15% of all mentions and comments.

The depth of his reach from a small sample of handles suggests a well-coordinated and organic social media engagement.

The other contenders still do not have enough data to come up in any analysis as of now.

The list of other contenders are:

• Alan Kyerematen – Butterfly Movement
• Nana Kwame Bediako – New Force Movement
• People’s National Convention (PNC)
• Convention People’s Party (CPP)
• Hassan Ayariga – All People’s Congress
• Progressive People’s Party (PPP)