The Ecology of X (Twitter) Discourse on the Domestic Debt Exchange Program in Ghana: Public Sentiments Analysis

Abstract

A great volume of discourse on the Domestic Exchange Program (DDEP) emerged on X (formerly  Twitter) when Ghana announced the measures to secure $ 3 billion bailouts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to resolve the post-COVID-19 economic crisis. Keywords and a search query were used to crawl tweets (n=5788) on the DDEP between February 1, to 28, 2023. X users’ sentiments and emotions, positive, neutral, or negative were analyzed using NRCLex, and Tone Analyzer by IBM. The emotional portrayal and categories such as sadness, fear, anger, disgust, trust, and happiness were also analyzed. The findings suggest that the dominant categories of sentiments expressed were mostly negative rather than positive. The findings further suggested that the sentiments and emotions expressed by the tweets were against the inclusion of pensioners' bonds, and pension funds in the DDEP. Also, the results from the emotional portrayal were disgust, sadness, surprise, anger, and fear on the introduction of the DDEP.  The study concluded that the overall portrayal of the emotions on the DDEP was that of total public rejection.

Keywords: X(Twitter); discourse; domestic debt; exchange; program; sentiment analysis; emotions

DOI: 10.7176/NMMC/106-06

Data of Publication: May 30^th 2024