(Trinidad Express) Posts and opinions from users of Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites are being monitored by the Government. This includes comments posted on news sites maintained by media houses.
This, as a private firm has been hired to gauge the feedback from the public on national issues such as Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s recent speech on the economy.
In September 2014, Ministry of Trade, Investments, Industry and Communications, led by Minister Vasant Bharath, commissioned JL (Jeston Lett) Creative Source to monitor the opinions of the people on social media. The company recently monitored the feedback from social media with respect to Persad-Bissessar’s address to the nation on January 8, 2015.
Feedback was also monitored on the controversial billboards that were erected along some of the nation’s highways, bearing the Prime Minister’s image and her Merry Christmas and Happy New year greetings to the people.
Based on information from the feedback gathered, Bharath had said earlier this month, 80 per cent of social media had no problem with the billboards although there appeared to be much negative hype about them.
However, the social media and monitoring report on the Prime Minister’s address to the nation found there was a 50/50 feedback, with the average citizen leaning towards positive sentiments.
The overall sentiments from social media found 49 per cent of the feedback was positive, 42 per cent negative and nine per cent neutral.
Lett, managing director of JL Creative Source, in a telephone interview yesterday, explained to the Express how his company derived this information.
He said all the feedback gathered with respect to the opinions on the Prime Minister’s speech was from computer software that was able to pull posts from profiles and sites that were public, using specific keyword searches.
Lett said there are times when the information is manually sorted but in this case, the results were from the software searches.
The monitoring overview showed 61 per cent of feedback gathered was from women and 39 per cent, males.
Lett said direct questions posted by social media users relating to the Prime Minister’s address also came up in the search. For example: Is the PM being totally honest with the population? Is the Government governing or playing politics? Is there more or less confidence in the Government following the address? Does the Government has what it takes to weather the storm?
The majority of social media users who were monitored fell within the 25-to-34 and 18-to-24 age groups.
Lett said the issue with the billboards was the first controversy his company monitored for the responses on social media.
Lett said further, JL Creative Source, which is based in Chaguanas was contracted through the Government Information Service Ltd (GISL), from September 2014 to September
2015, to monitor social media as it relates to information provided by the Government and national issues.
He did not disclose the value of the contract for these services.
Bharath told the Express Government decided to take the initiative and look at the feedback from the people on social media to help guide and adjust, if necessary, their plans and policies.
“Whatever we do, we measure to ensure that we get the response that we want, if not, we can tweak it; every action that we take as a Government, we want to ensure that it is benefiting the people and they get value from it,” said Bharath.
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