There is no lack of criticism on Singapore and her government. Time (2007) says her politics are “paternalistic” and her social environment “straitlaced”. The Economist (2010) describes Singapore as a “nanny state, but it is by no means an indulgent nanny”. Just last year (2011), an independent socio-political blog was “gazetted” by the govenment. So it may come as a surprise to observers when the Singapore government embarks on a National Conversation. Initiated by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Long and led by Education Minister Heng Swee Kiat, it is an opportunity to “reaffirm what is good and still relevant; recalibrate in areas where we have gone off course; and refresh and innovate, and break new ground.” Citizens can participate in the conversation either via Facebook, Twitter (#oursgconv), via organised dialogue sessions (which you need to signup for) or informal discussions. Here are our observations after four days (14 - 17 Sept) of social media monitoring using JamiQ Buzz.

1. National Conversation Case-Study: Conversation with PM Lee and
#askSG
There is no lack of criticism on Singapore and her government. Time (2007) says her politics are
“paternalistic” and her social environment “straitlaced”. The Economist (2010) describes Singapore as a
“nanny state, but it is by no means an indulgent nanny”. Just last year (2011), an independent socio-
political blog was “gazetted” by the govenment.
So it may come as a surprise to observers when the Singapore government embarks on a National
Conversation. Initiated by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Long and led by Education Minister Heng Swee Kiat, it
is an opportunity to “reaffirm what is good and still relevant; recalibrate in areas where we have gone off
course; and refresh and innovate, and break new ground.”.
Citizens can participate in the conversation either via Facebook, Twitter (#oursgconv), via organised
dialogue sessions (which you need to signup for) or informal discussions.

2. National Conversation Case-Study: Conversation with PM Lee and
#askSG
Channel News Asia recently announced that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong would be engaging
Singaporeans as part of the National Conversation directive, in a televised forum on 14th September.
Together with Education Minister Heng Swee Keat and Members of Parliament Indranee Rajah and Dr
Intan Azura Mokhtar, they would be responding to questions and points brought up by 50 invited guests,
which include Singaporeans from all walks of life. Views are also encouraged to tweet questions using the
#askSG hashtag, during the live interaction section.
Keyword choice was particularly
important, as capturing conversations
generated from the forum was
particularly important. Though “Prime
Minister” was rather generic, we included
it as we could potentially filter it down to
Singapore in the search portion.
Additionally, we tracked the proposed
hashtag #askSG to determine how widely
used it was over the weekend.

3. National Conversation Case-Study: Conversation with PM Lee and
#askSG
No. of % of Sentiment
Entries Total +ive/-ive
Singapore 449 100% -68.5% (-)
Media Type No. of % of Sentiment
Entries Total +ive/-ive
Microblogs 399 88.9% -73.0% (-)
News 31 6.9% 75.0% (+)
Blogs 18 4.0% 50.0%
Others 1 0.2% 100.0% (+)
There was a significant amount of entries recorded over the course of a month, with an average of
110 entries per day. Though most entries were not that influential, overall sentiment towards the
programme was negative on a whole, with an average negative sentiment of -68.5%.
The details also revealed that Microblogs were the most popular medium for expression, with close
to 89% of all mentions coming from microblogging sites. However, a majority of these sentiments
were negative, with an average negative sentiment of -73%. Ironically, 6.9% of chatter came from
news sites, which carried mostly positive sentiments of 75%.

4. National Conversation Case-Study: Conversation with PM Lee and
#askSG
Top 5 sites No. of % of Sentiment
Entries Total +ive/-ive
twitter.com/occupysg 16 3.6% -84.6% (-)
twitter.com/tocsg 14 3.1% -90.9% (-)
twitter.com/SGnews 13 2.9% -100.0% (-)
twitter.com/sgbroadcast 12 2.7% -66.7% (-)
twitter.com/TinPeiLingFan 11 2.4% -75.0% (-)
The negative sentiments found within microblogs can be explained somewhat with just a glance at the
top 5 sites – all of these are Twitter users who were generally negative about the entire forum, and
accounted for almost 15% of all total Twitter chatter. Additionally, the sentiment overview over the
weekend showed that while sentiments were generally positive on 14th Sept when the forum was
aired, opinions generally became worse as the days passed, culminating in largely negative sentiments
on the 16th and 17th of September.

5. National Conversation Case-Study: Conversation with PM Lee and
#askSG
To obtain a better idea about the negative issues people were talking about, we took a look at only
negative entries, which produced the top trending words above. According to our system, other than
top trending words such as “National Conversation” and “Conversation with PM Lee”, “Kenneth
Jeyaretnam” was mentioned very often as well. Results show that a post by Kenneth Jeyaretnam was
frequently shared on Twitter, with the associated title “National CONversation” (the caps was
deliberate in the posts). These accounted for a fair number of negative entries.

6. National Conversation Case-Study: Conversation with PM Lee and
#askSG
In addition, there were
several negative entries
over the course of the
weekend about the fact
that there were quite a
few members of the 50
participants who were
obvious PAP supporters
and members. This
contributed to the
increased negative
sentiment, as the public
decried the authenticity
of the forum’s
representation.

7. About JamiQ
JamiQ’s award-winning multilingual social media monitoring software and
services help businesses listen, measure, and discover insights from
conversations taking place online. JamiQ’s unique solution provides deep
analysis into Asia-Pacific’s diverse communities and multilingual social
media.
JamiQ uses advanced data mining and natural language processing
technology to produce real-time buzz trending, sentiment detection,
influence scoring, and market segmentation across multiple languages,
giving you the critical insights businesses need for real-time and strategic
decision-making.

8. Contact JamiQ
JamiQ Private Limited
+65 6536 0906 (office)
questions@jamiq.com
http://www.jamiq.com
67 South Bridge Road, Level 3
Singapore 058697