The year 2024 might be called the Year of Elections. There are 64 countries–which are home to almost half the world’s population–holding elections this year. These elections promise not only to scramble domestic politics, but also to reshape foreign relations as new governments form new alliances.
At FilterLabs, we recently expanded our coverage to include China. While gathering and analyzing data from mainstream Chinese news outlets, we noticed some interesting patterns around the recent UK elections:
The sentiment around UK elections moved in three distinct phases, and a sudden switch in direction usually means that a new narrative is moving through the media ecosystem. Using Talisman–our data platform that can look into the actual news stories and artifacts underlying a sentiment shift–we looked for the narratives driving this movement.
The first shift happened between June 24 and July 1, when sentiment fell. Looking more closely, we found that Chinese news sources were giving significant coverage to a betting scandal, in which Conservative, Labour, and Liberal Democratic candidates all allegedly placed bets on election outcomes.
The second shift happened July 2 to 3, when sentiment suddenly soared. There’s no mystery here, though. This was election day in the UK, and the great majority of the coverage focused on Labour’s big win.
What was really interesting, however, was the third shift. From July 4 to 7, sentiment fell and then stabilized. The betting scandal was in the past, and the Chinese media now focused on the future. There were many stories about the new Prime Minister’s wife, and most of them called her “beautiful” or “stunning.” There were also stories about a certain female Labour member of Parliament: the first Chinese-born person to ever hold such a position.
In general, there was a sense of excitement. Several articles mentioned the possibility of a new phase in British-Sino relations, with the implication that the UK has been too close to the US in recent years, but with the ascension of the new Prime Minister Keir Starmer the future might be different. “He is 61 years old and comes from a working-class family!” one article exclaimed.
Many more elections to come in the months ahead. What will the mood and the key narratives be—both in the countries casting their ballots, and among observers around the world? We'll be watching.
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