Twitter jumps on #SGElection fever with new custom emoji

Twitter has launched a special emoji to amplify and empower the ongoing conversation surrounding the upcoming General Election in Singapore. The emoji is available via multiple hashtags and will run until 17 July. To activate the emoji, users can use these hashtags - #SingaporeElection, #SGElection, #SingaporeVotes, #SGvotes, and #GE2020.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1276392707968004096

Reflecting Singapore's national colours of red and white, the emoji features the Singapore national flag and the ballot box. In a statement to Marketing, Kathleen Reen, Twitter's senior director of public policy and philanthropy Asia Pacific, said it launched the custom election emoji to unite Singaporeans around the #SGElection conversation. "We hope the emoji will be a valuable visual link to help promote the discoverability of the election conversation and to connect people in Singapore in real-time with a wide variety of other topics happening on our service," she added.

Two years ago during Malaysia's 14th General Elections, Twitter also created a custom emoji for the event which ran until 16 May 2018. The emoji featured a marked ballot above the Malaysian flag, which is shaped to resemble the ballot box. Meanwhile in 2017, it also revealed a new emoji dedicated to President Halimah Yacob, following her presidential victory. The Twitter emoji design was created in Yacob’s likeness, with Singapore’s national colours for her tudung (headscarf in Malay). Emojis were also created for the 2016 US election and European Union referendum. 

Separately, statistics from Isentia show that PAP has the most number of online mentions (32%) followed by the Workers' Party (26%) and Progress Singapore Party (26%).

There was also buzz surrounding heavily contested districts - Marine Parade GRC, Aljunied GRC, Hougang SMC, and Punggol West SMC. Meanwhile, the top five candidates with the highest buzz are Lee Hsien Yang, Nicole Seah, Pritam Singh, Lee Hsien Loong, and K. Shanmugam.

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