More online buzz about National Day this year

The Covid-19 pandemic has not dampened online activity surrounding this year's National Day, with related tweets on Twitter increasing 2½ times when compared with the same period last year.

Notably, more people this year emphasised community and the everyday in a more "authentic and people-oriented" expression of joy, a significant departure from last year, when the bulk of posts centred around the main event at the Padang on the evening of Aug 9.

The Straits Times worked with Quilt.AI, an artificial intelligence-powered research company, to analyse more than 6,000 tweets - with bots and retweets excluded - over the same two-week period before National Day this year and last.

The captions and images of 400 National Day-specific Instagram posts in each year were also looked at, but a similar analysis of Facebook posts could not be done, as it goes against the platform's terms of service.

Posts were identified by National Day-related hashtags and keywords such as "funpack" and "parade". The results showed that "NDP 2020 has created a narrative of its own", said Quilt.AI, referring to the National Day Parade.

While about 40 per cent of tweets last year were characterised as "celebrating spectacle" - with the posts including words like "singing", "concert" and "exhibition" - these had halved to just 20 per cent this year.

Instead, a new category of tweets on "celebrating home" emerged, with concepts like "baked goods", "cuisine" and "home recordings", in line with this year's more heartland-based celebrations. These increased from 1 per cent of related tweets last year to 16 per cent this year.

Anthropologist Angad Chowdhry, co-founder of Quilt.AI, said: "It seems there is a shift from the need for spectacle to the celebration of common humanity this year. This authenticity is an outcome of a reimagination of what is important in life (after) the pandemic."

Quilt.AI said National Day tweets about doing good deeds increased by 16 per cent from last year.

A 230 per cent increase in tweets about "recovery" also put this year's celebrations in context, hinting at people's hopes of recovering from the effects of the coronavirus.

There was also an increase in references to race and climate. Dr Chowdhry noted: "The socio-political commentary is increasing, but negativity is not, suggesting that a desire for constructive engagement with civil society is on the rise."

The study found that on Instagram, the top emotion in National Day posts this year was "affection", in contrast to "excitement" last year - a softer emotion that fit the pattern of the more "low-key" expressions of joy on Twitter.

Digital management consultant Ryan Lim from QED said sentiment research needs to take into account platforms such as WhatsApp and TikTok, as they are used by different demographic groups.

Dr Chowdhry said: "There is a potential of online positivity to have knock-on effects on how people engage with each other in real life. There is data that shows how negativity online impacts everyday life. It stands to reason that positivity does, too."