Analyzing public sentiments in Indonesia: A social media analysis of conversation on terrorism

Abstract

At the present time western media have consistently portrayed Islam negatively, often using terms like ‘terrorist radical’. These portrayals have reached Indonesia impacting its community. Social media, particularly X, has become an essential platform for social dialogue, including discussions on religious matters. Consequently, examining how X can voice perceptions of Islam and Muslims in Indonesia has become crucial. This study aims to find out public sentiments on Islam in Indonesia through an analysis on X. The data is X data throughout 2022 by entering the keywords in Indonesian language ‘terorist radical’. Data classification is conducted using a Support Vector Machine (SVM) approach. SVM utilizes keywords, namely, the word ‘terorist radical’ to predict sentiment towards Islam in Indonesia. The results show that there is an insignificant downward trend in sentiment, which indicates that the topic of ‘terrorist radical’ is still relevant to be discussed by X users, with a ratio of 30 percent positive and 70 percent negative. This comparison indicates that most of the conversations on X related to the topic of ‘terrorist radical’ tend to be negative. Furthermore, from the results of Top 50 Words, word cloud analysis, and also word network analysis, the same results are obtained, namely, that the words that appear are still in the same scope: ‘terrorist’, ‘radical’, ‘Islam’, ‘Indonesia’, ‘intolerant’, and ‘kelompok’. In conclusion, the findings of this study suggest that the topic of ‘terrorist radical’ remains pertinent in X discussions, with most conversations related to ‘terrorist radical’ tending to carry a negative connotation.