Sentiment Analysis on Bushfires in Australia: Will public anger unseat Scott Morrison?

In the Twitter based sentiment analysis, we noticed very strong anger against the incumbent Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison for his alleged ignorance to the rising bushfires in South Australia. As demands of his resignation are becoming louder, VisionRI conducted a sentiment analysis on the basis of posts on Twitter to assess the public mood.

Scott Morrison, the 30th Prime Minister of Australia is probably facing the worst public anger of his political career that too for allegedly ignoring bushfires in his home state New South Wales. Though the recent public anger against Morrison is primarily for his holidaying in Hawaii while rising incidents of bushfires led to emergency and caused the death of two volunteer firefighters, he has been in controversy on several occasions for his comments on bushfires, emissions and climate change.

However, this protest seems different. He is being mocked, flayed and even abused on Twitter as many times he tries to clarify his position. What is in the brains who are expressing themselves on Twitter? Is anger against Morrison spontaneous or deep rooted?

VisionRI attempted to decipher the public mood on the issue by conducting a sentiment analysis through a scientifically proven methodology. In this exercise, 9,100 tweets posted on the three Twitter hashtags #AustralianFires, #Scomomustgo and #ScoMoResign on 23 December were picked up for analysis. The sentiment analysis has provided some interesting results which could provide an insight to understand the thought process of Twitter users on the issue of bushfires.

High Anger but low Anticipation on 'Resign'

In the sentiment analysis, we observed a very high degree of anger against the Prime Minister Scott Morrison. The word 'resign' has appeared as the topmost word used by twitter users to express anger on Twitter. Besides, the words such as 'shit', 'angry', 'fighting', 'words' 'disaster', 'anxiety', and 'bad' also featured among the top eight words used to express anger.

The people seem to be more anguished on the words used by Morrison to defend his position and express his views on the bushfires. While Australia was facing one of the worst bushfires in recent years which gutted down about 900 homes and caused the death of two volunteers, the Prime Minister's statement that the fires are not new irked the people. "Fires are not new in Australia. There has been an under-appreciation of this fire season's preparation and there is no need for knee-jerking," said Morrison in media statement after he cut short his holiday and resumed office. However, he was flayed by Twitter users for this statement. Earlier too, the Prime Minister denied his holidaying in Hawaii but was edged to admit after his and his family's photos appeared on social media.

In the sentiment analysis, the Twitter users have expressed the highest degree of trust in the firefighting volunteers. Though trained by the government agencies, these volunteers are unpaid firefighters. After the tragic death of two firefighters, several civil society organizations came forward to collect donations for them and other volunteers engaged in firefighting. They are being hailed as 'real' heroes in Australia. The words 'real', 'volunteer' and 'volunteers' are the top three words used to express trust by Twitter users. We also observed trust on 'policy' and 'nation' but the Twitter users' sentiment on 'government' is highly negative.

Though the word 'resign' has also been prominently used to express fear and negative sentiments, it is not even in the top 15 words used for anticipation. This indicates that even those who are criticizing him on Twitter and asking him to resign are not estimating his resignation. Therefore, the anger against Morrison seems to be primarily spontaneous and may not create any serious political repercussions. This is a big relief for Morrison who is leading a coalition government with merely 44 MPs in 151-member Parliament.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the world's largest fire fighting center in New South Wales Rural Fire Service (NSWRFS). Imgage Credit @ScottMorrisonMP

Bushfires may be a Poll Issue

The sentiment analysis shows that the opposition parties may use bushfires in the coming state elections, Senate elections and also in the next Parliament Election 2022. We observed a comfortable degree of trust, anticipation, joy and surprise on opposition Labor Party but not for the Liberal Party. The word 'vote' has also been used in express the sentiments of anger, anticipation, joy, surprise and sadness. In the 2019 Parliamentary Elections, the Labor Party had won 68 seats but Liberal Party of Morrison with merely 44 seats managed to form a coalition government. If the government fails to find out any convincing solution to the bushfires, the issue may cause political damage to the ruling dispensation in the coming elections.

Immediate loss is major concern

The people seem to be mainly concerned with the immediate loss of lives and property. Their demands are primarily confined to help the victims, douse the fires and provide financial assistance to the volunteer firefighters.

In the sentiment analysis, we noticed the highest degree of sadness on loss. The word 'lost' the topmost word used to express sadness on Twitter. Besides, it is on 4th rank in expressing negative sentiment. Similarly, the word 'emergency' tops the list expressing surprise. It is also on 2nd rank in expressing sadness, fear, and negative sentiments. The words 'bad', 'anxiety', 'bloody', 'shame', 'pathetic' etc. are also used to express sentiments on immediate loss due to bushfires. As the US and Canada have sent 44 firefighters to help Australia, the Prime Minister may comfortably resolve the immediate crisis but needs to chalk out a long term strategy.

The Twitter users have also prominently used the word 'money' to express sentiments of anger, anticipation, joy, surprise, and trust which indicates that there is strongly positive sentiment on providing financial assistance to volunteers and victims of the bushfires. These public sentiments indicates the areas the government needs to address while formulating policy on the bushfires.

Though Morrison is often criticized for his ignorance to emission norms and climate change, these words are not seen in any of the ten sentiments – anger, anticipation, fear, sadness, positive, negative, joy, trust, surprise and disgust.

METHODOLOGY

The sentiment analysis is based on the data extracted from Twitter hashtags #AustralianFires, #Scomomustgo and #ScoMoResign. In this exercise, 9,100 tweets posted on these three Twitter hashtags on 23 December were picked up for analysis by using API (application programming interface). The extracted tweets were subjected through three methods of natural language processing – BING lexicon, NRC lexicon and AFINN lexicon – for sentiment analysis. We have used original tweets and retweets are not taken into consideration.

Research Team: J.P. Singh, Editor-in-Chief, Neeraj Singh Mehta, Technical Lead, Esham Chatterjee, Assistant Manager - Economic Studies and Planning, Siddheshwar Shukla, Associate Editor, and Senior Sub-Editors, Parag Narang and Subhro Prakash Ghosh.

Disclaimer: The conclusions drawn in the sentiment analysis are subject to technological limitations of data extraction and methodology(ies) used for data processing. This study is based on analysis of tweets only and the retweets were not taken into account. All the available precautions have been made to maintain the objectivity of the research and its presentation in a scientific fashion.