In the previous post I indicated that President Jacob Zuma’s State of the Nation Address started with a negative Twitter sentiment, bur ended with a positive sentiment. In this post I share results of my analysis that explain the reason for sentiment upswing, using Twitter timeline associated with the speech.
SONA2013 SENTIMENT ANALYSIS: as at 20H13
Twitter Sentiment at 20H13 (source: Twendz)
Negative sentiment was dominant in the earlier part of JZ’s speech, as depicted by RED bars in the image below. Here are the keywords from the speech that contributed to the negative sentiment:
SONA2013 Twitter Sentiment – Keywords (Source: Twendz)
As could be expected, recent incidents in South Africa weighed heavily on social netizens’ minds – including rape and brutal murder of Anene Booysen, and what has come to be known as Nkandla gate, relating to over R200 million spent on “security upgrades” at the President’s homestead – as they were listening to JZ’s promises about how these scourges are going to be addressed.
The following words were frequently tweeted/retweeted at this stage of the speech:
Words frequently tweeted/retweeted (Source: Twendz)
SONA2013 SENTIMENT ANALYSIS: as at 20H23
Twitter Sentiment as at 20H23
Around this time, the President mixed a bit of Zulu in his speech,
… and he also commended former President Mbeki on the sterling work done on the African peace mission in Sudan.
This earned him browny sentiment points.
SENTIMENT ANALYSIS: as at 20H28
Twitter Sentiment as at 20H28
Positive sentiment kept rising, despite the President’s introduction of the subject of jobs that got the the Democratic Alliance hot under the colour…
…and put them on the Sentiment chart.
SONA2013 Twitter Sentiment – Keywords as at 20H28
SENTIMENT ANALYSIS: as at 20H30
Twitter Sentiment as at 20H30
The President’s mention of BRICS did not have much impact on positive sentiment, as he was now getting ready to wrap up his SONA 2013 speech.
SONA2013 Twitter Sentiment – Keywords as at 20H30
SENTIMENT ANALYSIS: as at 20H37
Twitter Sentiment as at 20H37
By the time the President concluded his speech, the mood was firmly positive. As SONA2013 happened on February 14th, it was only proper that he ends it by wishing all South Africans a happy Valentine’s Day. Twitterers picked up on this love-ly note
SONA2013 Twitter Sentiment – Keywords as at 20H37
… and frequently tweeted/retweeted it:
Frequently tweeted/retweeted words as at 20H37
Khaya Dlanga (@khayadlanga) kept popping up in SONA2013 Word Clouds because he had the most fun of all other Twitterers, topping even the news agencies and the opposition party, the DA.
SONA2013 Top Twitterers (Source: Tweetlevel)
Here is a tweet that “made Khaya Dlanga famous” on the night:
The Most RT’d SONA2013 mention, according to Twitter
Part 3 of this series will be about SONA2013′s poor performance on Twitter, when compared to SONA2012.
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