Famous Jamus and other tales - how political Facebook fared in GE2020

Point 1: Hours before Cooling-Off Day pages began to chut pattern…

An important message bears repeating: not all pages are run the same. The timing of posts continues to differ on two key metrics: (1) activity outside of office hours and (2) extent to which posts are scheduled. Our new entrants, Gong Simi, Shut Down TRS and All Singapore Stuff, fit within the framework that was introduced in the previous article.

Gong Simi appears to operate primarily within office hours with noticeable drops during lunch hours. Within each hour, there are predictable spikes at the start, middle and end of an hour. As previously discussed, the regularity of posts on these pages suggests that these pages may be manned by personnel dedicated to running the page. This is because timing posts is an added activity for page administrators who may seek to structure their pipeline of posts.

Shut Down TRS exhibits behaviour that is rather regular spikes (something is rotten in the state of Denmark?) despite having over 4000 Facebook posts. The posts appear to be scheduled at a regular pace every two hours and are almost exclusively posted at the start of each hour. This suggests that there is very intense, deliberate, and active management of the page by administrators.

All Singapore Stuff, on the other hand, is defined by posts outside office hours and irregular posting times across the hour. The goal of such pages, while still focussed on gaining traction for their posts, have different strategies to do so. ASS is probably community run. Posters may not be available during office hours, and there may not be a “manager” who deliberately prioritises posts.

In the two charts below, post frequencies have been normalised (peak activity = 1) to provide a better visual comparison.

Frequency of all historical posts within an hour

By and large, post activity trended upwards during the election period before trailing off in the lead up to Cooling Off Day on 9 July. Nonetheless, each page retained its characteristic behaviour in terms of scheduling and office hours, albeit with more posts in the wee hours (guilty as charged).

Two tables comparing within-hour post activity before and during the GE period analysed

However, pages appear to have “chut pattern” just before Cooling Off Day. Many of the pages - especially Shut Down TRS and Gong Simi - recorded a sharp and sudden spike in post activity shortly before rules prohibiting publishing of material which have the ability to influence a voter’s decision went into effect. In the case of Gong Simi and Shut Down TRS, post activity almost tripled in the hours leading up to midnight. This spike is likely to be the result of a deliberate effort to increase outreach at the last stretch of the campaign, and set the agenda going into Polling Day.

Broadly speaking, there appears to be a similar focus on several topics across all 12 pages. For pages that tend to be more supportive of the ruling party, emphasis was placed on job security, proven track records and scrutiny of the Opposition’s record particularly a candidate’s conduct or past performance. Conversely, pages that tend to be more Opposition-friendly focused on the possibility of an Opposition wipeout and the need to have check and balances in Parliament.

Point 2: Why do some events that lead to a wellspring of memes end up being referenced on political Facebook and others don’t? Short answer: Utilitarianism.

The 2020 General Election rose up to the Tall Order of delivering quality meme content in a shorter 9-day campaign period. So to that… thumbs up, man!

We revisit four golden moments (the East Coast Plan, the Charles Yeo hard carry, Jamus’s cockles as well as Marymount SMC’s impeding stand-by-universe) and two incidents (#IStandWithRaeesah and Ivan Lim) to understand why certain “memeable” events end up on Facebook and why others don’t. These events are chosen as they appear to have caught the attention of most Singaporeans on social media.

What is clear from the graphs that capture the mention rates of specific events or persons over the GE period is that events only matter to political Facebook if they involve an unfolding saga or a clear political phenomenon. Generally speaking, most content that ends up being made into memes do not really gain traction on political Facebook as it is generally speaking, an abstraction of an instance aimed at receiving LOLs rather than a solid foundation for policy critique. No post was referred to much by political Facebook during the course of the General Election period. As such, the various Charles Yeo (spawned as a result of his constituency political broadcast) and East Coast Plan memes failed to gain traction on political Facebook. Mentions of both remained relatively constant (and low) throughout the GE period.

Events (that produce memes on social media) only find their way onto political Facebook when the subject matter being discussed can be used in support of a particular political narrative; indeed, the reason why the two political sagas I look at appear to be mentioned on political Facebook far more frequently that the 4 moments is because they were used by the pages to draw attention to broader political issues such as elitism, racism and religion.

Well…all events except Jamus.

Jamus is a unique case as memes stemming from his televised debate appearance on 1 July focused on his conduct while political Facebook zoomed in on the content of his speeches. This was not the case in the Marymount SMC, East Coast Plan and Charles Yeo memes. In this case, the “Jamus exception” is a result of the different subject matter focus of meme content and political Facebook. More exceptions about Jamus will be covered in point 3 below.

## pad applied on the interval: day

Point 3: Jamus warms the cockles of everyone’s hearts (yes, even Ayu’s “pro-PAP” pages could not resist him).

However, this Jamus exception extends further into the coverage he received on political Facebook. Interest in Jamus peaked on July 1 and 2 after the broadcast of the party debates on national television where his performance received rave reviews from political pundits, debate coaches and random social media commentators alike. He received overwhelmingly positive coverage across all six sites in which his name was mentioned.

In the previous article, I mentioned that there was a clear political divide when it came to the discussion of domestic issues by political Facebook pages. There is evidence that pages are removed regardless of their affiliations. Of the three pages that are removed - two can be classified as having more positive coverage of the ruling party while the other is clearly more critical. What is startling then is that Jamus manages to breach this divide on political Facebook to receive positive sentiment from both “pro-PAP” and “anti-PAP” pages.

Point 4: There was a clear “Sengkang pivot”: Sengkang GRC became the new big thing on political Facebook at the expense of East Coast GRC. But this doesn’t appear to be because of Jamus! gasp

## pad applied on the interval: day

Prior to nomination day, East Coast GRC was branded by political pundits as the GRC to watch given the relatively close contests between the People’s Action Party (PAP) and Workers’ Party (WP) in 2011 and 2015. However, Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat’s surprise candidacy resulted in a shift in the media narrative. One of the WP candidates for East Coast, Nicole Seah, argued that it was unfair for voters to decide between Opposition representation and a PM-in-waiting. 5 of the 7 posts about East Coast GRC on 1 July directly addressed this surprise candidacy.

“[F]ormer PAP MP Inderjit Singh:”When Mr Heng moved to East Coast, people felt there was little chance of the WP winning that GRC, so the attention shifted to the WP’s next-strongest team.""

Commentators then began to speak of a “close contest” in Sengkang GRC especially after WP candidate Jamus Lim’s performance on the televised debates on 1 July. Subsequently on 4 July, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong appeared on a PAP webinar with the Sengkang GRC team. Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean joined a walkabout in Rivervale Plaza on the following day. However, this shifting mainstream media attention to Sengkang GRC did not appear to have affected post activity on political Facebook.

Attention on Sengkang GRC on these pages only rocketed after news of a police report lodged against WP candidate, Raeesah Khan. Around 40% of all posts discussing Sengkang GRC on or after 5 July directly address the police reports. If we look at the mentions of Jamus on political Facebook, it was the renewed interest in Sengkang GRC that led to his secondary mentions peak.

Interestingly, Singapore Matters seemed to be prescient when it posted the following on 4 July at around 11am Singapore Time, on the same day as the 1 of 2 police reports that were lodged. Unfortunately, the data cannot prove whether there was coordination involved, or whether the reports were inspired by Singapore Matters’ sleuthing.

Endnote

Ultimately, what we are witnessing is an increasingly dynamic and complex social media ecosystem where political matters about Singapore is concerned. However, as much as they had some agency in affecting public opinion (i.e. period before Cooling Off Day), they nonetheless exist as part of a broader system of communications. These pages do get affected by events beyond their control. As a consumer of online information, I’d be concerned about how these pages are run and their role in shaping our political discourse in the years to come.