In the build-up to the 2024 General Elections in Ghana, IMANI’s PULSE Reports Episode 06 sheds light on the evolving social media landscape, providing a comprehensive analysis of sentiment trends and key influencers shaping public discourse.

PULSE, short for Public Understanding and Literacy for Sentiment and Election Analysis, has emerged as a crucial tool for gauging the “pulse” of Ghanaians through sentiment analysis on various social media platforms.

The report delves into the sentiments surrounding major political contenders, with a focus on the two main parties, the NPP and the NDC, as well as emerging forces and independent candidates.

In this latest episode, spanning from March 26th to April 29th, 2024, IMANI’s analysis reveals intriguing shifts in sentiment dynamics.

Positive Sentiment

The NPP maintains its momentum from the previous month, with a notable increase in positive sentiment, reaching around 15.32%.

Conversely, the NDC’s positive sentiment remains relatively stable at 9.48%, indicating a marginal improvement from the last reporting period.

Negative Sentiment

Both major party candidates witness a decline in negative sentiments. The NPP experiences a nearly 5% drop, while the NDC’s negative sentiment decreases by around 4%.

Key Events Impacting Sentiment

Candidate Stances: Candidate Bawumia’s public stance on LGBTQ+ issues garners significant attention and positive sentiment, resonating with Ghana’s conservative values.

Economic Discourse: Discussions surrounding the economy, including Matthew Opoku-Prempeh’s remarks on power rationing, shape sentiment dynamics.

Political Developments: The outdooring of Dr Jane Naana Opoku-Agyeman by the NDC and the SML scandal contribute to fluctuations in sentiment, with the NDC narrowing the gap with the NPP in certain aspects.

Mentions and Reach

While the NPP leads in social media mentions the NDC gains ground, particularly in non-social media platforms such as blogs and websites.

Candidate Mahama’s campaign, with hashtags like #24houreconomy and #together4change2024, generates substantial engagement and reach, highlighting key narratives dominating the discourse.

Head-to-Head Comparison

Despite the NPP’s higher number of mentions, the NDC demonstrates a more favourable ratio of mentions to positive sentiments, indicating efficient traction.

Candidate Bawumia’s association with keywords like “president” underscores his campaign’s narrative of him being the “incoming president,” while Mahama’s campaign emphasizes themes of change and economic transformation.

Special Mentions and Segmentation

Independent candidates like Nana Kwame Bediako and Alan Kyerematen garner significant traction, with positive sentiments around their movements and hashtags.

Collaborations between independent players are closely monitored, with potential implications for swaying social media opinion.

As Ghana inches closer to the 2024 elections, IMANI’s PULSE Reports serve as a vital compass, illuminating the ever-shifting currents of public sentiment and political discourse on social media.

With each episode, a deeper understanding of the electorate’s mood and influencers emerges, shaping the narrative landscape in this crucial electoral cycle.

BELOW IS THE FULL REPORT:

Episode 06 of IMANI’s PULSE Reports

In the run-up to the 2024 General Elections, IMANI presents PULSE, a fortnightly curated social media-based sentiment analysis report designed to follow the “pulse” of Ghanaians.

The IMANI Public Understanding and Literacy for Sentiment and Election analysis (PULSE) aims to determine the sentiment on social media regarding the major political contenders for the election, as well as influential trends and influencers that are shaping social media discourse. The analyses are referenced from the following platforms:

1. Facebook
2. X (formerly, Twitter)
3. YouTube
4. Web
5. TikTok
6. Podcasts
7. Newsfeeds

PULSE monitors primarily the two main contenders, the NPP and the NDC. For this sixth episode of the series, we are adding the sentiments and influence of the other parties, the PNC, CPP, ACP and PPP, as well as independent candidates like the Butterfly Movement, the New Force and other emerging forces on the landscape.

Information is gathered via main keywords. As news themes change, analysis will be done on these keyword associations.

For April 2024, the major keywords used were the following for both major contenders.

Candidate Bawumia	Candidate Mahama
Bawumia	Mahama
#Bawumia	#Mahama
NPP	NDC
#NPP	#NDC

For the other contenders, since the flagbearers are not known, the keywords used were as follows:

CPP	PNC	ACP	PPP	Butterfly Movement	The New Force
#CPP	#PNC	Ayariga	#PPP	Alan Kyeremateng	Nana Kwame Bediako

In this iteration, several other hashtags have emerged with candidate Bawumia’s campaign on social media, including the following:

1. #itispossible
2. #Boldsolutionsforthefuture
3. #empoweringghana

For Candidate Mahama, some of the hashtags that emerged with his campaign are:

1. #24houreconomy
2. #changeiscoming
3. #together4change2024

Quite a few events drew a lot of attention from commenters on social media. A few of these are as follows:

1. Candidate Bawumia’s public stance on LGBTQ+ and its place in Ghana.
2. Issues related to the economy, especially Hon. Matthew Opoku-Prempeh’s comment to a journalist about them creating their own power rationing timetable.

For the NDC, the event of the outdooring of Dr Jane Naana Opoku-Agyeman created a huge amount of engagement towards the tail end of the period under review. The SML scandal within the same period also created some talking points and is still a developing issue.

The sentiments are of three values, i.e., positive, negative and neutral. All these are also collated and analyzed to determine the language, tone of comments and tweets, and tone of commentary and posts related to both candidates.

SUMMARY OF REPORT:

NPP maintains its momentum from last month. Positive sentiment for NPP increased to around 15.32%. The NDC’s positive sentiment remained relatively the same at  9.48%.

Public negative sentiment has significantly dropped for both, with NPP having an almost 5% drop and the NDC also having around 4% drop in negative sentiments.

RESULTS:

The period under observation for this edition of the report is from the 26^th of March to the 29^th of April 2024

POSITIVE SENTIMENT:

The sentiments of NDC rose by about 2 percentage points during the period to 11.38%. This means that sentiments have improved from the last period.  The NPP’s positive sentiments, however, improved from 10.71% to around 15.76%. This trend follows the previous month’s trend of NPP having more positive sentiment information on social media.

The image below shows the levels of positive sentiment for the NDC and the NPP:

NEGATIVE SENTIMENT:

Purely negative sentiment over the period decreased for both party candidates. People who spoke of NPP negatively fell from about 17% to around 12%, showing that the trend where NPP had less negative sentiments continued within the period. NDC also had their sentiments fall albeit by almost the same margin as the NPP. This led them to an around 15% negative sentiment rate.

Dr Bawumia’s public stance on LGBTQ+ issues boosted and resonated with his positive sentiments as Ghana is overall a very conservative country, and this led to a lot of favourable mentions and comments about Candidate Bawumia.

The NDC has closed the gap and reduced its negative sentiments for the period under review, but is still lagging behind the NPP generally when it comes to negative sentiments.

Events

Some extra positive buzz at the tail end of last month from the launch of the One Student One tablet triggered mentions. The Primaries for the vacant Ejisu seat also dominated mentions for NPP as several commentators on social media were speculating. This led to most of the high positive sentiments concerning NPP on social media.

Like mentioned earlier, the public stance on the issue of LGBTQ+ by candidate Bawumia on the auspicious occasion of the Eid celebrations contributed much to his positive sentiments on social media. Additionally, his visit within the same period to the Vatican led to more mentions as well as positive sentiments over the period, with less negative sentiment. Also, to be noted is his renovation of the Jakpa palace which also led to many positive sentiments and less negative sentiments.

For candidate Mahama, a few positive sentiments that are emerging and might be even bigger in the very immediate future are positive sentiments around the ongoing power crisis in Dumsor, as well as the issue of taxes, especially import taxes, with one viral video of candidate Mahama reviewing import duties.

Additionally, and more significantly, the outdooring of his Vice candidate, Prof Jane Naana Opoku-Agyeman has boosted interactions on social media significantly, with over 4 million reaches on the day of the unveiling alone, as well as heavily positive sentiments on the day in question, from the limited samples that were analyzed. On the day in question, positive sentiments were over 70%. Possibly the SML scandal and its reports and recommendations also triggered more negative sentiments for the NPP which resulted also in more positive comment for the NDC.

MENTIONS AND REACH

NPP still leads in mentions on social media. However, in the last period under review, the NDC has closed the gap in mentions. The NDC leads when it comes to non-social media reach. This includes sources like blogs, websites, podcasts and the like. Discussions regarding Mahama’s candidacy and ongoing power crisis are dominating the narrative.

The biggest hashtags associated with mentions of Mahama are as shown below. Another emerging hashtag that seems to be gaining traction is “#togetherforchange2024” which is associated with the most positive sentiment mentions.

In the case of candidate Mahama, the keyword: “Ghana” triggered the most mentions, with a social reach of over 30 million, however, it had far fewer engagements in terms of comments and shares.

The keyword “president” the most powerful mention associated with candidate Dr Bawumia.

Metrics show that within the period, the social reach associated with that word alone was 16 million and it was also about 60% positive sentiments for those mentions.

HEAD-TO-HEAD

This month, an almost comparative sample of both candidates was taken to ensure a more granular comparison of metrics with relation to mentions and engagement. This is also because additional datasets were available due to improved and increased mentions from the Mahama campaign, allowing for more mentions to be sampled.

People are also being more responsive to party-related events and several issues will be coming up in future sentiment analyses, where sentiments towards specific issues will be analysed to see if they have bearings on overall sentiment. These will make for a more interesting reading of the space.

This reflects NPP’s continued dominance of headspace on social media, interactions and discussions.

Characteristic	Bawumia		Mahama		TOTALS
Total mentions	11257	49.21%	11619	50.79%	22,876
Social media mentions	7802	54.41%	6536	45.59%	14,338
Non-Social media mentions	3455	40.47%	5083	59.53%	8,538
Positive mentions	1774	57.30%	1322	42.70%	3,096
Negative mentions	1460	45.01%	1784	54.99%	3,244
Social media reach	33060524	46.58%	37910409	53.42%	70,970,933
Non-Social media reach	18411933.21	41.46%	25999255.73	58.54%	44,411,189
Social Media Interactions	455164	51.83%	423063	48.17%	878,227
AVE ($)	3839249	43.33%	5020426	56.67%	8,859,675
User generated content	7962	53.99%	6786	46.01%	14,748

NDC has more monitored non-social media mentions as previously stated. However, due to the many issues surrounding governance in Ghana today, it is quite clear why the NPP candidate has more mentions. Consequently, on a head-to-head, there will be more positives per the number of mentions and sentiments realized.

However, looking at the ratio of mentions and the Average Revenue Equivalent, it shows that the NDC, although puts out lesser content, gets more value for its mentions in terms of audience and spread of its content. This shows an advantage of traction.

ASSOCIATED KEYWORDS AND HASHTAGS

Associated Keywords related to the campaigns as a worldcloud have also been gathered. For education, this is a set of curated words that are closely associated with and added to posts and comments about the candidates.

For Candidate Mahama, the following are the major keywords:

For context, the Hashtag “#24houreconomy” still dominates Candidate Mahama’s social media commentary. Newer hashtags building up are “#letsbuildghanatogether” and “#together4change2024”. It seems to be generating a lot of buzz for the Mahama campaign and leading most of the posts from pro-Mahama social accounts.  

For Candidate Bawumia, the following are the major keywords:

The key standout here is that the Bawumia campaign on social media seems to converge around the mention of him as the incoming president. One hashtag that seems to be gaining traction between both candidates is “#ghanapolitics” which seems to be increasing especially on channels like TikTok and YouTube.

The stage is thus set for more interesting engagements in the coming months and how they shape the social media discussions of both parties.

GUIDE TO SENTIMENT ANALYSIS:

Mentions: Number of times the name has been mentioned within the time.

Social Media Mentions: Number of times the name has been mentioned on social media platforms.

Non-Social Mentions: Number of times the name has been mentioned on other websites.

Estimated Social Media Reach: Estimated number of people that have seen the mentions on social media.

Non-Social Reach: Estimated number of impressions that have seen mentions on non-social media sites and websites (eg News Websites, etc)

Social Media Interactions: Total number of interactions generated with comments and threads in social media.

User Generated Content: Total number of interactions generated from mentions on social media and other forums, blogs etc.

Social Media Likes: Number of Likes of social media mentions found.

Videos Incl Tik Tok: Number of videos with mentions of the keywords on Tik Tok.

Positive Mentions: Number of threads/mentions with potentially positive sentiment.

Negative Mentions: Number of threads/mentions with potentially negative sentiment.

AVE: Advertising Value Equivalent: An estimated value of what the total cost will be if all the mentions were paid for.

Hashtags: a word or phrase preceded by a hash sign (#), used on social media sites and applications, especially Twitter, to identify digital content on a specific topic.

SPECIAL MENTIONS AND SEGMENTATION:

Other Contenders:

Here the Social Media Reach of other contenders are examined. Mentions for most of the actors in this space remain negligible compared to the top two.

Nana Kwame Bediako, aka Cheddar, is still very dominant in the discussions about the independents. He still commands engagement and a growing following, with increasing positive sentiments now around a 45% mark for his mentions.

His most dominant “#thenewforce” hashtag has quite a reach on social media in addition to his over 12 million post reach, which is quite significant. However, active engagements on his posts have reduced over the period.

The Movement for Change, led by Alan Kyerematen also features this time round with some significant traction due to increased activity by the movement over the period. They have been engaging more and this has led to an uptick in their mentions and sentiments, which are largely positive and favourable on social media.

Their biggest hashtag is “#ghanawillriseagain” and it has been garnering enough engagements to be noticed. With an announcement of collaborating with other independent players, we are actively monitoring to see if there are significant mentions to add to the sentiment levels and whether it sways social media opinion.

The list of other contenders are:

• Alan Kyerematen – Butterfly Movement
• Nana Kwame Bediako – New Force Movement
• People’s National Convention (PNC)
• Convention People’s Party (CPP)
• Hassan Ayariga – All People’s Congress
• Progressive People’s Party (PPP)