AsPac should use social media data to improve policy response

MANILA, Philippines — Policymakers in Asia and the Pacific, including the Philippines, can use publicly available social media data to understand the people’s sentiment on issues and improve policy response, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

In the special supplement of the Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2022 report, the multilateral lender said social media and open communication platforms, which are becoming major sources of information for research, could be useful for policymakers.

ADB said an analysis of social media text data could enable understanding of public attitudes and behaviors on particular topics and issues.

When information from traditional survey data is delayed and/or incomplete, policymakers can use social media to analyze the mood and behavior on a variety of phenomena such as health crises, disasters, and climate change.

“Policymakers can benefit in situations requiring rapid responses by using social media text data to ‘listen’ to what individuals consider to be significant in their lives,” the ADB said.

As public sentiment and perceptions determine policy success, ADB chief economist Albert Park said governments can apply techniques to listen to online communities more effectively and adjust program implementation and communication strategies accordingly.

In the Philippines, the ADB said information on public sentiment relating to COVID-19 can be of use to policymakers when considering containment and recovery policies.

The ADB report looked into sentiments on the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines for the period of May to December 2021 using a final sample of 28,294 tweets by 10,834 unique Twitter users in the country, excluding those from news organizations and influencers.

It said most of the tweets associated with positive and negative sentiment occurred between the Philippines’ strictest enhanced community quarantine in mid-August 2021 and the announcement of Alert Level 4 status in mid-September last year.

Tweets associated with positive and negative sentiment increased again in December last year, coinciding with the detection of the Omicron variant in the country.

ADB said the results suggest Twitter users in the country did not always have a single response to the changes in the levels of containment being imposed, as the events have shown increases in both positive and negative sentiments each time.

“Greater stringency levels may have been welcomed as a protective public health measure for some Twitter users: for others, the increased levels of stringency elicited negative sentiments due to the impact on their livelihoods,” the ADB said.

It said analyzing sentiments by quantifying how Twitter users feel about the pandemic could show the level of social tolerance towards further mobility curbs or easing of restrictions.

“By integrating social media sentiment analysis with other data sources, further analyses may yield more expansive insights and provide policymakers with information on which communities have disproportionate numbers of people reacting negatively to events,” the ADB said.