By Connie French, Christina Lynes, Hayden Swank
Access to clean water is a luxury many developing countries cannot afford. Cambodia is one of those countries combatting this multifaceted issue. Through analyzing the Twitter conversation around the Cambodian water crisis, we have drawn common themes amongst users interest in the issue.
We classified tweets into four categories based on content – hygiene, infrastructure, agriculture and irrelevant. Hygiene, infrastructure and agriculture are all factors in Cambodia that contribute or are a direct effect of the water crisis.
Our analysis demonstrated that the highest volume, or number of mentions on Twitter, came from the agriculture theme. Users often engage more with content that relates to the issues farmers face with a dwindling water supply and how poor farming practices perpetuate the issue. This illustrates that within the Cambodian water crisis conversation, agriculture content is the most likely to produce the highest volume and engagement.
