With the current economic crisis in Sri Lanka and the ensuing political instability, the country has been in search of a stable government. There have been many calls for systemic reforms. However, with the appointment of a new prime minister from the old guard, and the ensuing battle to find a majority in parliament, we look at the public sentiment toward some of the key political figures in the country.
It must be noted that while a significant portion of the country has access to the internet and use social media, the views expressed may not reflect the opinions of the public due to differences in the needs of individuals from various socio-economic backgrounds and their presence on social media.
We analyse the social sentiment in a few ways over the last month and have listed a few in reverse order of polarity. The analysis is done using the Artificial Intelligence toolkit of Kommonpoll, which helps us track and analyse mentions on a given topic, brand, or personality.
Key:
Overall sentiment polarity – score between -1 and 1, where -1 is negative sentiment, and 1 is positive sentiment. This score is an average and not weighted to the influence.
Positivity percentage – the percentage of “positive” comments
Social reach – is the total number of social interactions for the keyword. This includes all likes, reposts, and comments for all social posts, as well as the view count for videos.
Mention count – it shows the total number of mentions found for your keyword. This includes the mentions that are considered similar and thus may be higher than the number of mentions shown.
Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR) (Former Prime Minister of Sri Lanka)
Sentiment Polarity: -0.139
Mention Count: 10,142
Social Reach: 202,559
Positivity Percentage: 28.7%
Mentions over time:
Sentiment over time:
Gotabaya Rajapaksa (Gota) (Current President of Sri Lanka)
Sentiment Polarity: -0.111
Mention Count: 9,159
Social Reach: 152,275
Positivity Percentage:30.9%
Mentions over time:
Sentiment over time:
Ranil Wickremesinghe (RW)(Current Prime Minister of Sri Lanka)
Sentiment Polarity: 0.06
Mention Count: 10,164
Social Reach: 142,341
Positivity Percentage:40.2%
Mentions over time:
Sentiment over time:
Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD)
Sentiment Polarity: 0.035
Mention Count: 17,820
Social Reach: 161,704
Positivity Percentage: 14.9
Mentions over time:
Sentiment over time:
Sajith Premadasa
Sentiment Polarity: 0.072
Mention Count: 5,459
Social Reach: 65,465
Positivity Percentage: 43.0%
Mentions over time:
Sentiment over time:
Dr Harsha De Silva
Sentiment Polarity: 0.18
Mention Count: 779
Social Reach: 16,945
Positivity Percentage: 57.2%
Mentions over time:
Sentiment over time:
Interesting finds:
While Anura Kumara Dissanayake receives a modest polarity of 0.035, his positivity score is the lowest of the six individuals. This may be due to his positive mentions having scores that could be considered “extremely positive”, whereas the rest may have moderately positive mentions.
Disclaimer: This study is conducted to analyse the current public sentiment expressed online using empirical evidence and does not reflect the author’s views.