The first day of Chinese New Year was celebrated worldwide on February 8th 2016. We collected tweets mentioning Chinese New Year in English and Bahasa Malaysia from February 7th – February 12th 2016. This was limited to the most common phrases – ‘Tahun Baru Cina’, ‘Chinese New Year’, ‘Gong Xi Fa Cai’, ‘CNY’ and similar spellings. Our focus was on identifying the content that was widely shared and the demographics of users tweeting Chinese New Year greetings.
From the tweets collected we prepared listing of popular tweets and media shared by users in Malaysia, limited by the language used. More details on the methodology used are at the end of this post.
Top Mentions
The following tweets were the most retweeted Chinese New Year tweets by users in Malaysia. Only public retweets were taken into account.
Gong Xi Fa Cai !
— Mohd Najib Tun Razak (@NajibRazak) February 7, 2016
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Di Sarawak,
Tahun Baru Cina, ngabang
Deepavali, ngabang
Hari Raya, ngabang
Gawai, ngabang
Krismas, ngabang
Pendek kata, harmonilah!
— mnto (@Manto_Beats) February 8, 2016
Fireworks everywhere and you’ll know it’s 12 am! Hahahahah happy Chinese New Year guys wooooooooooo ! Have a happy holiday!
— rachel (@rachelyappppp) February 7, 2016
Mercun sana sini. rasa mcm diaorg sedang sambut birthday aku pula. Terharunya huhu. Happy Chinese New Year 🐒💥🎉🏮🎈🎉💥
— Irfan Hafiz (@HafizIrfan_) February 7, 2016
Selamat tahun baru cina kepada kawan² melayu yang bermata sepet
— khusairi (@khusairiamin) February 7, 2016
Gong Xi Fa Cai everyone! Have a good break.
— billy pilgrim (@rdzaminhat) February 8, 2016
Eh dah raya. Gong Xi Fa Cai everyone 👲🏻
— ㅤ (@aqilzulkiflee) February 7, 2016
Happy Chinese New Year my fellow chinese friends. Nak kuih bulan satu
— qiden (@MuhdNqiuddin) February 7, 2016
Top Media
The following media were the most shared during this period. Media is ranked by URL shares and not retweets. For example the first media shown was shared 1,349 times by 1,340 users in Malaysia but was initially retweeted only 199 times. The tweets shown here represent the first usage of each image within this period.
Happy Chinese New Year! Tahun Monyet! pic.twitter.com/ZY8HgbeCmz
— Raden Muhammad Lánce (@AslannAs) February 7, 2016
Happy Chinese New Year. pic.twitter.com/x2fA9ldlaU
— ㅤ (@Itwitlawak) February 7, 2016
…I like the Chinese language … but it’s not so easy to pronounce 😂😉 Happy Chinese New Year! #YearOfTheMonkey 🐵🙈🙉 pic.twitter.com/9YDHm9hmB5
— Mesut Özil (@MesutOzil1088) February 8, 2016
NI NAK MINTAK APA NI? 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/6panxJYdTL
— tuf (@tufairies) February 7, 2016
A day in the life of Najib Razak. #ChineseNewYear pic.twitter.com/tFh8MlMOQu
— Jin Shern (James) (@JamesJSChai) February 9, 2016
Cara menyambut Tahun Baru Cina dengan betul pic.twitter.com/dtruKNMwBY
— Faizal Rosly (@ijaicool) February 8, 2016
sent this gif to my chinese friends and wished them happy CNY. they cursed me like hell. 😂 pic.twitter.com/JRHcesbpH0
— Norm (@_norman_g) February 7, 2016
#DOUPAI FACE pic.twitter.com/ooZQcLmBj5
— ninida (@e_l_f_nini_da) February 7, 2016
Gong Xi Fa Cai! Can Abam has ang bao and some lmao pls? pic.twitter.com/qRNcvboIID
— Abam Apam (@RealAbamApam) February 6, 2016
Setiap kali Chinese New Year, aku mesti tunggu cerita dua orang legend ni. pic.twitter.com/MaEGNnINpf
— HFZ (@heyitsmehafiz) February 8, 2016
Love this picture! Happy Chinese New Year to our Chinese friends ☺🎉 pic.twitter.com/KD37oNsqwL
— Youth Events (@YouthMalaysia) February 7, 2016
A very Happy Chinese New Year to everyone celebrating right now. Best wishes to you from Manchester! 🎊 pic.twitter.com/dmn7ku2ee9
— Basti Schweinsteiger (@BSchweinsteiger) February 7, 2016
Happy #ChineseNewYear to all fans of the #BPL! #yearofthemonkey 🐒 pic.twitter.com/olix4Vr8mn
— Premier League (@premierleague) February 8, 2016
Happy Monkey year! #ChineseNewYear pic.twitter.com/4kqvfYC5sR
— Sergio Kun Aguero (@aguerosergiokun) February 8, 2016
Happy Chinese New Year! #yearofthemonkey pic.twitter.com/FvMPhxQhko
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) February 8, 2016
Elok elok Janna Nick nak wish Chinese New Year, ada GPS bersuara 😋 pic.twitter.com/D48DHcTu62
— ROTIKAYA (@rotikaya) February 8, 2016
Yee sang mmg sinonim dgn sambutan Tahun Baru Cina. Sama mcm kita rakyat Malaysia, plbg ramuan berbeza diadun jd satu pic.twitter.com/5krs1bDWtj
— Mohd Najib Tun Razak (@NajibRazak) February 8, 2016
#AWANInews Sekolah khusus untuk monyet curi tumpuan sempena Tahun Baru Cina https://t.co/0EgLUDefZY pic.twitter.com/P6VQFxkTeB
— Astro AWANI (@501Awani) February 7, 2016
Happy Chinese New Year!! pada semua Bangsa Johor dan juga komrad kami berbangsa Cina.semoga bgembira di thun bru ini pic.twitter.com/2HPf9cxJuM
— Boys Of Straits (@BoysOfStraits) February 8, 2016
Happy Chinese New Year from my wife, my son and I, to all my Chinese followers✨ pic.twitter.com/IJCjmXRtrW
— Wesley Sneijder (@sneijder101010) February 7, 2016
Refresh yourself with #PETRONASCoffeeBreak during this #ChineseNewYear! For more info, visit https://t.co/yeoIN2TCpq pic.twitter.com/c4KN1LpeYO
— PETRONAS Brands (@Petronasbrands) February 5, 2016
Di sini Dayang nak ucapkan Selamat Tahun Baru Cina to all my Chinese friends! Have a good celebration everybody 🎉👍 pic.twitter.com/1uNxpQ7q3s
— DAYANG Z. (@dayangatul) February 7, 2016
Disambut singa comel ini di rumah terbuka Tahun Baru Cina MCA. Penari singa 2 beradik,Yoong Kin Jun & Yoong Seng Poh pic.twitter.com/jjNUUgcbUF
— Mohd Najib Tun Razak (@NajibRazak) February 8, 2016
Other Local Media
The following media are a selection of locally-produced content that were shared by less users than the previous list.
Gong Xi Fa Cai ! pic.twitter.com/AtcPbuamA8
— Mohamed Azmin Ali (@AzminAli) February 7, 2016
Abang mengucapkan Selamat Tahun Baru Cina kepada semua Cina dan juga Ridhuan Tee. pic.twitter.com/AeGmqiQzR7
— DuBook Press (@DuBookPress) February 7, 2016
Happy Chinese New Year! pic.twitter.com/lpK99dO3h6
— Jin Lim (@Jinnyboy) February 8, 2016
Share the joy and happiness this Chinese New Year with the S Pen.#myGalaxyNote5 #PinkIsNOW .bit.ly/note5my pic.twitter.com/7gStTsqN13
— Samsung Malaysia (@SamsungMalaysia) February 5, 2016
Gong xi fa cai, acik2 semua.
sekarang pilih.
acik2 nk bagi angpow @ nak kena baling mercun papan?*tunjuk mercun* pic.twitter.com/yfutvq6plD
— hellomeow (@hellomeow_as) February 8, 2016
Happy Chinese New Year to all students and staff of MSU; and partners and friends of MSU.
Happy holidays to all! pic.twitter.com/MfzvpJuWyE— Mohd Shukri Ab Yajid (@MohdShukriYajid) February 6, 2016
Happy Chinese New Year everyone! Here’s my drawing of the Monkey Year 2016. Enjoy the festivities! pic.twitter.com/3C0sMYsWBr
— Nicol Ann David (@NicolDavid) February 8, 2016
Gong Xi Fa cai from O C K #CNY #imlek #ohchentaku pic.twitter.com/ZTM9F0zOeL
— Oh Chentaku [OCK] (@xohchentakux) February 8, 2016
Happy New Year and Gong Xi Fa Cai to all my Chinese Frens and followers! From Aaron Aziz Family! pic.twitter.com/8NrNCkXMmC
— Aaron Aziz Official (@AaronDwiAziz) February 7, 2016
#InstaArtis : Yasmin Hani sekeluarga di Tahun Baru Cina… pic.twitter.com/uN3xCVXP9Q
— #AME2016 (@ERA_fm) February 8, 2016
Gong Xi Fa Cai! pic.twitter.com/qYCfgnDKhe
— ZoologiMY/Fiefie (@ZoologiMY) February 7, 2016
Chinese new year kena ada:
1. Yee sang
2. Ang pau
3. Limau mandarin
4. Tidur pic.twitter.com/ippGjFRGAh— mrandmrsaidil (@mrandmrsaidil) February 8, 2016
Second day of Chinese New Year with a red HUAT beverage. ;) pic.twitter.com/xc60HjFO4K
— Starbucks Malaysia (@StarbucksMY) February 9, 2016
Wishing you a happy and prosperous Chinese New Year, from all of us at Malaysia Airlines! pic.twitter.com/dYjzItVgQ6
— Malaysia Airlines (@MAS) February 8, 2016
Selamat menyambut Tahun Baru Cina, Gong Xi Fa Cai – ikhlas daripada DS @HishammuddinH2O #HappyCNY #ChineseNewYear pic.twitter.com/ASOi0evVHL
— H2O Comms (@H2OComms) February 7, 2016
#InstaAtlet : Dato’ @LeeChongWei bagi ucapan sempena Tahun Baru Cina… pic.twitter.com/sEi1d1j10i
— #AME2016 (@ERA_fm) February 9, 2016
Happy #ChineseNewYear ! pic.twitter.com/nw03xe53h1
— Vampire Squad (@VampireSquadMY) February 9, 2016
Gong Xi Fa Cai kpd masyarakat Cina di Malaysia. Moga ianya disambut dgn penuh perpaduan, keharmonian & kemakmuran… pic.twitter.com/OpG7Lazif9
— Ahmad Maslan (@ahmadmaslan) February 7, 2016
#CNY2016: Selamat menyambut Tahun Baru Cina kepada semua yang meraikannya. Gong Xi Fa Cai! #1Malaysia pic.twitter.com/wKXzVtRqyc
— Barisan Nasional (@barisanasional) February 8, 2016
Gong Xi Fa Chai to all Malaysians celebrating the Chinese New Year! #1Malaysia #UnityInDiversity pic.twitter.com/k9hLc96UHN
— Chief of Navy – PTL (@mykamarul) February 7, 2016
Wishing you a Happy Lunar New Year! Gong Xi Fa Cai!
恭喜发财! pic.twitter.com/BsHMpcB5BD— AirAsia (@AirAsia) February 8, 2016
Popular Words
The word cloud below shows the most popular words in tweets about Chinese New Year. The size of the word is based on the number of times it was used with large words being the most popular. Common words and dominant words such as ‘Chinese’,’New’, ‘Year’ and ‘Cina’ were removed to better highlight words related to Chinese New Year.
Twitter Community
This network graph shows how users based in Malaysia tweeting about Chinese New Year were connected to each other from February 7th – February 12th (UTC +8). There are 25,448 users in this network.
Each user is represented as a node (circle) that is sized based on the number of tweets they sent to other users, and retweets of their own tweets. Large nodes are users who generated content that was shared and drew attention from other users. The nodes are also coloured based on a popularity scale from blue (low) to yellow, orange, red and purple (high). Nodes are connected to each other if they tweet to each other or retweet each other. Repeated interactions between users are represented as thicker lines.
This is a close-up view showing the most popular users:
There are 2 clear patterns in this network:
- The most popular users are small in size, indicating they did not reach the majority of the community. The most popular user (@_amranfanz) was only connected to 4.8% of the users in this network.
- There is a cluster of connected users in the center of the network that were engaged in retweeting popular content, and a large number of users surrounding this cluster who were only engaged in conversation or making a small number (1-3) of retweets.
- These patterns in the network indicate that Chinese New Year was not a conversation topic that was dominated by content (media/tweets) from popular users.
Ranked by popularity, the top 25 users were:
- @_amranfanz
- @itwitlawak
- @mesutozil1088
- @ottel
- @najibrazak
- @jamesjschai
- @rachelyappppp
- @manto_beats
- @ijaicool
- @_norman_g
- @songtrlplets
- @realabamapam
- @heyitsmehafiz
- @hazardeden10
- @aslannas
- @youthmalaysia
- @501awani
- @bschweinsteiger
- @premierleague
- @hafizirfan_
- @henrylau89
- @jaimnacuha
- @khusairiamin
- @rdzaminhat
- @lucaspeebo
Demographics and Methodology
We collected 809,983 tweets from 535,947 users tweeting about Chinese New Year. This is a sample of the global conversation limited to English and Bahasa Malaysia keywords.
We currently have a database of 597,373 Twitter users based in Malaysia. These users have been profiled based on their profile information and tweets collected since October 2014. We filtered tweets about Chinese New Year to get a dataset of tweets that were produced by local users.
After filtering we obtained 51,454 tweets from 34,277 users based in Malaysia. Using this dataset we then summarised the listing of popular tweets and media.
From the filtered total in Malaysia:
- 16,701 retweets were made by 12,215 users.
- 34,753 non-RT tweets were made by 25,040 users.
- 13,526 tweets from 10,539 users contained images. There were a total of 5,372 unique image URLs. This includes retweets and embedded videos.
Only 32.5% of tweets were retweets of content made by other users. 67.5% of tweets were personal tweets e.g. opinions, images, well-wishes, messages to other users, links to websites, shared content from other websites, comments on other tweets and personal statements.
The breakdown of users by primary language is below.
Primary Language | Users | (%) |
English | 9,963 | 29.07 |
Hindi/Tamil | 2 | 0.01 |
Bahasa Malaysia | 20,727 | 60.47 |
Mixed | 3,019 | 8.81 |
Other | 322 | 0.94 |
Chinese | 244 | 0.71 |
The following table lists the breakdown of users by state:
State Code | Users | (%) |
MY/JHR | 3,270 | 9.54 |
MY/KDH | 1,204 | 3.51 |
MY/KTN | 644 | 1.88 |
MY/KUL | 6,449 | 18.81 |
MY/LBN | 96 | 0.28 |
MY/MLK | 1,487 | 4.34 |
MY/NSN | 1,013 | 2.96 |
MY/PHG | 1,233 | 3.60 |
MY/PJY | 273 | 0.80 |
MY/PLS | 320 | 0.93 |
MY/PNG | 1,621 | 4.73 |
MY/PRK | 1,754 | 5.12 |
MY/SBH | 1,106 | 3.23 |
MY/SGR | 11,365 | 33.16 |
MY/SWK | 1,625 | 4.74 |
MY/TRG | 817 | 2.38 |
If you are interested in consulting with us for location-based Twitter marketing or doing research on Malaysian topics of interest on Twitter, please contact admin@politweet.org .