Measuring Malaysian public perception with secret-eye / Siti Zaleha Zainal Abidin, Nasiroh Omar and M. Hamiz M. Radzi

People’s perception and emotion are usually measured through conducting
a survey research. With the rigid multiple choice or lickert scale selection of
answers, participants have to respond within a given time frame to give their
feedback on a certain specified issue. In this paper, we present our research
through collecting data regarding people’s perception and emotion through an
online forum. We quantify the data and perform data classification based on
issues and emotion. Data collection are carried out by using an implemented
software tool called Secret-Eye which is capable of extracting all significant
words in the forum unobtrusively at real time real life basis. The classified
data are ranked according to their frequency of existence. The discussion on
the tsunami disaster in Japan that happened in March 2011, is selected for this
study. It is beneficial to have the results on the perception analysis as public’s
feelings and facts on the discussion are expressed naturally. Thus, the results
indicate that it is feasible to extract people’s true means of perception through
social media.