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Deciphering West Philippine Sea: A Plutchik and VADER Algorithm Sentiment

Analysis

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DOI: 10.17485/ijst/2018/v11i47/130980

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 ISSN (Print) : 0974-6846
Indian Journal of Science and Technology, Vol 11(47), DOI: 10.17485/ijst/2018/v11i47/130980, December 2018 ISSN (Online) : 0974-5645

Deciphering West Philippine Sea: A Plutchik and

VADER Algorithm Sentiment Analysis
Las Johansen B. Caluza*
Information Technology and Computer Education Department, Leyte Normal University, Philippines;
lasjohansencaluza@lnu.edu.ph

Abstract
Objectives: Territorial disputes over the West Philippine Sea are an emerging issue in the Philippines and other ASEAN
Members with China. The only source of information is coming from the media like the television, online news portals, and
social media. In line with this, this study aimed to unveil Netizens emotions and common issues found from the different
news articles. Methods/Statistical Analysis: This study scraped the different conversations from Twitter and online
news articles published from January 2018 to April 2018 using a Pluchik algorithm for emotions, Valence Awareness
Dictionary sEntiment Reasoner (VADER) algorithm for sentiment analysis, and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) using
Gibbs Sampling – Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) for topic modeling. 2500 times of simulation were performed and
validated before developing the hidden themes that are prevalent in the different news articles and supported by Netizens
emotions. Findings: Results revealed five (5) underlying themes found in the different news articles such as The assertion
of Philippine Sovereignty over Wes Philippine Sea Claim, Philippine-China Co-Ownership and Joint Exploitation of Natural
Resources in the Disputed Islands, Intensive Military Presence, Freedom of Navigation, and Military Facilities Buildup
in the Disputed Island, China-Philippine Relations through Bilateral Agreement, Trade, Military Support, and Security,
and One China Policy through Territorial and Defense Power. Also, Netizens Sentiments showed a majority of them who
tweeted were neutral (95%) and only few who were negative (2.67%) and positive (2.33%) where the majority of their
emotions through tweets were classified as Joy, Surprise, and Sadness. Only a few tweets were classified as anger, disgust,
anticipation, and fear. The findings were unique since it focuses on the soft evidence and the actual opinions, views,
and emotions relative to the issues on the disputed islands. Moreover, this result could give insights to the appropriate
authorities in dealing with the situations in the West Philippine Sea. Application/Improvements: Further studies maybe
conducted by using other social media like Facebook in understanding the emotions and views of the Netizens.

Keywords: Asia, Content Analysis, Data Mining, Deciphering, Gibbs Sampling, Latent Dirichlet Allocation, Plutchik Wheel
of Emotion, Simulation, Topic Modeling, VADER Sentiment Analysis

Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines,

1. Introduction
National territory is considered to be the most sacred as
it defines the sense of ownership and belongingness of a
country and its populace. The 1987 Constitution of the
Republic of the Philippines defined national territory in
Article 1. Anent to this, the disputed islands in the West
Philippine Sea has been an issue between China, and
the Member State of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) such as Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia,
Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam. The Philippines is
one of the claimants where it submitted a case against
China known as the South China Sea Arbitration under
Annex VII to the United Nations Convention on the Law
of the Sea (UNCLOS) where it ruled and showed “no his-
torical rights” of the China1,2. After this decision made
by UNCLOS, News agencies around the world includ-
ing in the Philippines announced through television and
published both print and online about the ruling on the

*Author for correspondence

 Deciphering West Philippine Sea: A Plutchik and VADER Algorithm Sentiment Analysis
disputed islands. China and other claimant countries
had shown its stand over the disputed islands3 where
Chinese Navy expanded operational areas into the high
seas towards the “second island chain” running along the
Bonins and Marianas4. Also, China’s economic muscle
has translated into an enhancement of its military capaci-
ties, especially its maritime capabilities propelled by its
determination to safeguard its economic and core inter-
est. China has declared the South China Sea as her core
concern which implies that China is prepared even to go
to war to ensure this declared sovereignty5. In the same
article, Marwah5 articulated the ASEAN’s diverse opin-
ions on the South China Sea where the issue usually not
been discussed based on the recent years of ASEAN sum-
mit, in fact in July 2012 ASEAN Summit in Cambodia,
Cambodia showed its stiff resistance. While during the
Malaysian Chairmanship of ASEAN Summit 2015, the
Philippine President asked leaders of the association to
issue a collective statement condemning China’s reclama-
tion of the disputed waters. Among the ASEAN member
countries, the Philippines and Vietnam had shown its
resistance over China’s reclamation steps in the islands.
Another action that made more tension in the disputed
island was when China started building a military outpost.
A few years back, the military buildup in the conflicted
islands does not necessarily indicate that Beijing will use
force to occupy more islands, but rather that Beijing seeks
to enhance its military presence to augment its bargaining
leverage in future negotiations6. In UNCLOS, the Aquino
government asked the panel to comment on:
Whether China can lawfully make any maritime claim
based on its nine-dash line, either to sovereignty over the
waters or sovereign rights to the natural resources within
the waters; whether the “islands” occupied by China can
claim more than twelve-nm territorial sea, or are even
legitimately subject of sovereignty claims; and whether
China can be commanded to refrain from preventing
Philippine vessels from exploiting the living resources in
the disputed waters7.
With all of this issues about the South China Sea or the
West Philippines Sea, no study was made about under-
standing the common topics of the different news articles
published online andthe people’s feelings about the dis-
puted island issues. Therefore, it is empirically essential
to understand and unveil prevalent topics and emotions
of the Netizens about the conflicted islands in the West
Philippine Sea to come-up with a better and humanely
solutions on the disputed islands.
2 Vol 11 (47) | December 2018 | www.indjst.org
2. The Research Questions
This study aimed to unveil and described prevailing top-
ics and emotions about the West Philippine Sea. The
result of the study could be a basis in coming up with a
better and humanely solutions about the disputed island.
Specifically, this study seeks the following questions:
• What underlying themes be generated based on
patterns?
• What is the probability of the theme per articles?
• Based on the post and comments made by the
Netizens in Twitter, what are their sentiments
about the West Philippine Sea?
3. Materials and methods
3.1 Research Design
This study applied Exploratory Sequential Mixed Methods
where the initial phase started with data collection using
qualitative information and analysis, then followed by
quantitative data generation and analysis with a conclud-
ingstage of data analysis combining the two results8,9. To
support the intention, this study used content analysis
using relational analysis. Relational analysis, like con-
ceptual analysis, it started with data or text classification
present in the text corpus. However, it seeks to go beyond
by exploring the concepts identified. Relational analysis
has also been termed semantic analysis10. This research
has six (6) steps focusing on qualitative data collection
from the different sources, qualitative data processing,
and themes development. Also, it focused on themes
validation before exhaustive discussion of the potential
information hidden in the text corpus. Finally, the themes
were synthesized in four (4) stages such as descriptive,
diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive analytics.
3.2 Research Process and Data Analysis
(Figure 1)
Step 1: Data Selection and Scraping
In data selection for sentiment analysis and modeling, it
is essential to consider the credibility of the information
taken from the internet. The internet today is treated as
a rich source of literature and secondary data in social
science research11. In line with this, Internet data collec-
Indian Journal of Science and Technology

tion could indeed be problematic from source credibility
– an essential issue in persuasive communication12,13,14.
With this issue, when using internet-based information
in research, the researcher must evaluate the data to be
collected. Documentary Sources in Social Research15
introduce four criteria in assessing secondary sources that
to include published materials, computerized databases,
and syndicated services16. The four criteria for evaluat-
ing secondary sources are Authenticity, Credibility,
Representativeness, and Meaning.
Figure 1. Research process for sentiment analysis.
In this case, the researcher follows the four criteria in
choosing News Articles online. The articles were taken
from reputed and known News Publishing Companies
in the Philippines such as Inquirer, Manila Bulletin,
Manila Standard, Manila Times, and Philippine Star
from January 2018 to April 2018. The News Articles were
scraped using a standard scraping method and removing
unnecessary and unrelated information. There were 25
News Articles that were scraped and named after the new
publishing company and the date of publication. Finally,
the researcher mined the conversations from Twitter with
a hashtag west philippine sea or anything that talks about
the West Philippines Sea with 1292 tweets to unveil the
sentiments of the Netizens relative to the issue on the dis-
puted islands in the West Philippine Sea.
Step 2: Text Preprocessing and Cleaning
Text mining is the process of extracting vital information
from big data17; others call it Text Data Mining (TDM)
and Knowledge Discovery in Textual Databases (KDT).
When performing text mining, preprocessing and clean-
ing text play an important role.Preprocessing in text
mining, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and infor-
mation retrieval is an important task and critical step
since this is the stage where data preprocessing is used
for extracting interesting and non-trivial and knowledge
from unstructured text data also known as text corpus18.
Vol 11 (47) | December 2018 | www.indjst.org
Las Johansen B. Caluza
In the preprocessing stage, information extraction from
the text corpus is performed to identify keywords and
relationships within the text17 also known as pattern
matching. This technology is very advantageous when
dealing with large volumes of text17,19. The preprocessing
and cleaning methods performed in this research are:
• Stopwords Removal Methods: A stop word
may be identified as a word that has the same
likelihood of occurring in those documents
not relevant to a query as in those documents
relevant to the query20. This study used the Term-
Based Random Sampling (TBRS).
• Stemming Method: This method is used to iden-
tify the root/stem of a word. For example, the words
connect, connected, connecting, and connections,
are all can be stemmed to the word “connect”21. The
idea of stemming is to reduce the total number of
distinct terms in a document or a query which in
turn will decrease the processing time of the final
output. In this research, N-Gram Stemmer was uti-
lized as it is language independent and hence very
useful in many applications17,22. An N-gram is an
N-character slice of a longer string23.
• Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency:
Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency
(TF-IDF) is a numerical statistic which reveals
that a word is how vital to a document in a col-
lection. The TF- IDF is often used as a weighting
factor in information retrieval and text mining.
The value of TF-IDF increases proportionally to
the number of times a word appears in the text
file but affected by the frequency of the word
in the corpus. This can help to control the fact
that some words are generally more common
than others17. Term Frequency (TF) is specified
as the number of times a term occurs in a docu-
ment24,25. The algorithm used in this research for
Term Frequency was:
By using R-programming language, the result is
expected to constructs or coerces a term-document
matrix or a document-term matrix26.
Step 3: Topic Modeling using Unsupervised
Learning
Deeper understanding the sentiment does not end on
identifying positivity, negativity, and neutrality. It is also
Indian Journal of Science and Technology 3
 Deciphering West Philippine Sea: A Plutchik and VADER Algorithm Sentiment Analysis

to unfold hidden topics or themes in the articles, conver- 2. Choose , where

sations, post, comments, or anything that is written by 3. For each of the word position i, j, where , and
looking into the pattern of words found in the text corpus. a. Choose a topic
Unfolding the topics or themes can be done by using unsu- b. Choose a word
pervised machine learning in data mining called Topic
Modeling. Topic modeling algorithms are widely applied The sizes are treated as independent of all the other
to examine the thematic composition of text corpora but data generating variables (w and z). The subscript is the
remain difficult to interpret and adjust27. Topic modeling often released, as in the plate diagram shown here.
finds human-readable structures in unstructured textual However, the exact parameter inference of the LDA
data, and the most widely used technique is the Latent model is intractable, and thus, approximate estimation
Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) algorithm28. By taking into methods are needed. An approximate algorithm named
consideration the technical requirement of text analysis, Gibbs sampling31 is widely used for parameter estimation
this research utilized Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA)29 in topic models due to its simplicity under Dirichlet priors.
to analyze the topics of news articles online and explore
the different issues about the West Philippine Sea. Inline
with the assumption of “bag of words,” LDA represents a
document as a mixture of potential topics in which a topic
has a multinomial distribution over words. Every docu-
ment will have its mixing proportion of topics, and each
topic has its word distribution30. Based on an unsuper-
vised Bayesian learning algorithm, LDA can capture the
potential topics that represent the voices of the writers/
Figure 2. Gibbs sampler general algorithm.
authors from unstructured and enormous online news
about the West Philippines Sea.
LDA enables the discovery of potential topics from
our large unstructured review data. With the method, we
can identify an optimum number of topics, label the top-
ics, and analyze the differences and relative importance of
the topics for different text corpus30. A topic is a unique
distribution over a vocabulary of words that authors use to
describe a certain issue where in this study, it is the West
Philippine Sea. LDA is a three-layer Bayesian probability
model and a complete generative model of a document.
Following Blei, Ng, and Jordan29, Figure 2 shows the Figure 3. Plate notation representing LDA.
graphical model representation of LDA. The basic idea
performed was that documentsas represented by random Step 4: Apply Gibbs Sampling Method- an
concoctions over possible topics, where categorization of MCMC Approach for Validation
each topic by a distribution of words29.
With plane notation (Figure 3), the dependencies Gibbs sampling is a method appropriate for the job. The
among the many variables bagged concisely. The boxes idea in Gibbs sampling is to generate subsequent samples
are “plates” representing duplicates. The external plate by sweeping through each variable (or block of variables)
represents documents, while the internal plate represents to sample from its conditional distribution with the
the frequent choice of topics and words in a document. remaining variables fixed to their current values as shown
in Figure 232. The underlying logic of MCMC sampling is
that we can estimate any desired expectation by ergodic
The generative process (algorithm):
averages. That is, we can compute any statistic of a poste-
rior distribution as long as we have N simulated samples
1. Choose , where and is the Dirichlet distribution for
from that distribution:
parameter

4 Vol 11 (47) | December 2018 | www.indjst.org Indian Journal of Science and Technology

This procedure keeps on until “convergence” (the
sample values have the same distribution as if they were
ample from the right posterior joint distribution33.
Step 5: Sentiment Analysis Processes
Sentiment analysis is the contextual mining of text which
identifies and extracts subjective information from the
source material and helped to see the social persuasion of
a particular event. However, restriction on the analysis of
social media streams to fundamental sentiment analysis
and count based metricsoccurs33. This is paralleltoscratch
the surface and to miss out on those high-valuable insights
waiting to be discovered. Sentiment analysis is the cog-
nitive operation of shaping if a statement is negative,
positive, or neutral andsome call it opinion mining.A typ-
ical use case for this technology is to discover how people
feel about a particular topic34. In this study, to unveil the
sentiments of the Netizens on Twitter, the researcher uti-
lized two unique sentiment algorithms such as Plutchik
Model and Valence Awareness Dictionary sEntiment
Reasoner (VADER).
• The Plutchik Wheel of Emotions Model
In everyday human existence conceive of emotion –
anger, despair, joy, grief – as a feeling, an inner state35.
Today’s generation, sentiment analysis is rarely used
to unveil untold story and emotions of Internet Users
towards specific issues in politics, education, business
and marketing, and other human experiences written in
books, magazines, news articles, social media commen-
taries, and another type of conversations. In line with this,
Plutchik introduces eight (8) primary emotions: joy, and
sadness, anger and fear, trust and disgust, and surprise
and anticipation36. Moreover, Plutchik’s model shows
connectivity between the ideas of an emotion circle with
a color wheel as shown in Figure 4. These eight emo-
tions are assumed to be complete in the sense that any
expressed emotion is related or subsumed by one of the
eight. In his work, Plutchik states that these emotions are
culturally independent. Given this assumption, we can
apply this model to any given language, which we con-
sider to be a strong point37.
• Valence Awareness Dictionary sEntiment
Reasoner (VADER) Model
In support of Plutchik Wheel of Emotion model, this
study utilized the VADER Model to enhance the meaning
of the sentiments about a particular issue like the West
Philippine Sea News Articles online. VADER is a lexicon
and rule-based sentiment analysis library. It performs
Vol 11 (47) | December 2018 | www.indjst.org
Las Johansen B. Caluza
well on text originating in social media where it was
able to include sentiment from emoticons, sentiment-
related acronyms, and slang38. As presented in the work
of Gilbert and Hutto39, VADER was a mixture of quali-
tative and quantitative approach to produce and validate
a standard sentiment lexicon attuned to microblog-like
contexts. A sentiment lexicon is a collection of lexical fea-
tures (e.g., words) which are commonly labeled according
to their semantic orientation as either positive or nega-
tive40. In this approach, each of the words in the lexicon is
rated as to whether it is positive or negative, and in many
cases,  how  positive or negative. When  VADER  analyses
a piece of text, it checks to see if any of the words in
the text are present in the lexicon. VADER  produces
four sentiment metrics from these word ratings. The
first three, positive, neutral and negative, represent the
proportion of the text that falls into those categories. The
final metric, the compound score, is the sum of all of the
lexicon ratings (1.9 and 1.8 in this case) and standardized
to range between -1 and 141.
Step 6: Interpretation and Exhaustive
Discussion
In interpreting the results, the researcher should clearly
describe the findings in details. Followed by an exhaustive
discussion about the phenomenon that revealed and must
be supported by the literature. The discussion should
answer the gaps stated in the introduction. Depth articu-
lation of the findings by answering how did it happen, why
did it happen, and what should be doneis just some idea in
presenting the analysis in the discussion part.
3.3 Tools and Software Used
This study utilized Python programming language in
interpreting mathematical foundations and algorithms,
R-programming for data visualization and processing
through the help of python programming, Orange 3 soft-
ware, and Web scraper.
3.4 Ethical Consideration and Reflexivity
Ethical standards in conducting research must strictly fol-
low. That is why in this research, the researcher opted not
to reveal the origin of the news articles published online
nor either to reveal the authors of the news to avoid future
predicaments and legal issues. While in obtaining tweets
in twitter, the researcher applies for API access key and
security where terms and conditions in using tweet infor-
Indian Journal of Science and Technology 5
 Deciphering West Philippine Sea: A Plutchik and VADER Algorithm Sentiment Analysis

mation are stipulated. The names of the Netizens were underlying themes came from the patterns of words in
removed, and only the content or the tweets remained every topic. Based on the result, topic1 theme talked about
and used in the study. After the analysis and interpreta- Assertion of Philippine Sovereignty over West Philippine
tion, the tweet databank was automatically destroyed Sea Claim, topic twothemestalked about Philippine-China
to prevent any mishandling and violations in the terms Co-Ownership and Joint Exploration of Natural Resources
and conditions where the researcher agreed. Finally, the in the Disputed Islands, and topicthreethemestalked about
position of the researcher in this research wasunequivo- Intensive Military Presence, Freedom of Navigation, and
cal; his intention was only to reveal underlying themes Military Facilities Buildup in the Disputed Island. Also,
in the different articles and Netizens reactions by study- topic 4 talked about China-Philippine Relations through
ing its emotions towards the conflicted islands in the Bilateral Agreement, Trade, Military Support, and Security
West Philippines Sea. The interpretation made by the and topicfivethemestalked about One China Policy
researcher maybe affected since he is a Filipino teacher through Territorial and Defense Power.
in a state university in the Philippines. His interpretations
are based on his capacity and readings about the subject. Table 1. Articles to topic assignment
Articles Topics
4. Results and Discussion Art1.txt 3
Art2.txt 1
Art3.txt 4
4.1 Latent Themes of News Articles about
Art4.txt 2
the West Philippine Sea
Art5.txt 3
Articles taken from the different leading news online pro-
Art6.txt 5
viders in the Philippines were assigned to topics using the
LDA algorithm. As shown in Table 1, articles are labeled Art7.txt 4
with the same topic number indicates common story or Art8.txt 3
underlying themes such as Art1.txt, Art5.txt, Art8.txt, Art9.txt 3
Art9.txt, Art10.txt, Art13.txt, Art19.txt, and Art25.txt Art10.txt 3
were auto-assigned to topic three (3). While articles Art2. Art11.txt 1
txt, Art11.txt, Art12.txt, Art16.txt, Art18.txt, and Art23.
Art12.txt 1
txt were auto-assigned to topic one (1). Also, topic four (4)
was auto-assigned to articles Art3.txt, Art7.txt, Art15.txt, Art13.txt 3
and Art21.txt. Moreover, topic two (2) was auto-assigned Art14.txt 2
to articles Art4.txt, Art14.txt, Art20.txt, Art22.txt, and Art15.txt 4
Art24.txt. Finally, articles Art6.txt and Art17.txt were Art16.txt 1
auto-assigned to topic five (5). Art17.txt 5
Based on the result, it shows that topic three (3) were
Art18.txt 1
the most common topics among the different articles from
the different online news provider. This was followed by Art19.txt 3
topic one (1),then topic two (2), followed by topic four Art20.txt 2
(4), and finally topic five (5). The result shows that there is Art21.txt 4
an emerging theme among the different articles based on Art22.txt 2
topic assignment. This issue could be of high impact and Art23.txt 1
public concern relative to the disputed islands in the West
Art24.txt 2
Philippine Sea.
In understanding further, the topics assigned to every Art25.txt 3
article, LDA generateda list of topicswith terms. As shown
in Table 2, it presented only the top 20 words from over a Theme 1: Assertion of Philippine Sovereignty over West
thousand words assigned to every topic. Meanwhile, the Philippine Sea Claim

6 Vol 11 (47) | December 2018 | www.indjst.org Indian Journal of Science and Technology
 Las Johansen B. Caluza

Table 2. Topic to terms and generation of latent themes

Top 20 Words Topic 1 Topic 2 Topic 3 Topic 4 Topic 5
1 sea exploration china china china
2 west joint sea forces one
3 china international south foreign chinese
4 duterte philippines military think policy
5 philippines gas islands navy world
6 government law area maritime time
7 rise resources disputed sovereignty war
8 president agreement freedom development country
9 rights percent naval areas power
10 filipino disputed aircraft countries asia
11 statement part navigation relations national
12 claim energy reef philippines secretary
13 sovereign ruling continue agreements conduct
14 now tribunal artificial bilateral dispute
15 within oil united issues administration
16 exclusive president used trade defense
17 natural court protest security nation
18 must marine facilities support interest
19 country legal defense develop foreign
20 manila coownership building ministry territorial
Underlying The assertion Philippine-China Intensive Military China-Philippine One China
Themes of Philippine Co-Ownership and Presence, Freedom Relations Policy through
Sovereignty over Joint Exploration of of Navigation, and through Bilateral Territorial and
West Philippine Natural Resources Military Facilities Agreement, Trade, Defense Power
Sea Claim in the Disputed Buildup in the Military Support,
Islands Disputed Island and Security

The Philippine Government take a stand on the rights
over conflicted islands in the West Philippine Sea when
UNCLOS in favor the ruling to the Philippines and
emphasizing China’s “no historical rights”1,2. In a report
conducted by42, the Philippine has emphasizedrights to
Scarborough Shoal as well as 50 [Spratly island] feature
which is known collectively as the Kalayaan Island Group
(KIG). In the same report, the Philippines claims to sov-
ereignty over the Scarborough Shoal and the KIG both
legally and historically. It implies that the Philippines has
all the rights to claim the conflicted islands in the West
Philippine Sea as the tribunal itself had made its ruling
relative to the case filed by the Philippine Government.
However, what remains unclear is as to who will imple-
ment such ruling. Considering that China has enormous
advantages than the Philippines, from economic to mili-
tary and the capability to occupy the West Philippine Sea.
Theme 2: Philippine-China Co-Ownership and Joint
Exploration of Natural Resources in the Disputed Islands
The West Philippine Sea is rich in natural resources
like marine life and oil and gas. As reported by Forbes,
state-owned oil major China National Offshore Oil
Company (CNOOC), a significant amount of oil and
gas reserved from unexposed areas, although the num-
bers were unconfirmed through research43. With this, the
Philippine Government action is to avoid confrontation
against China and considering sealing a pact with China
for joint exploration West Philippine Sea44. Moreover, in
a recent development, it was reported that the Philippine

Vol 11 (47) | December 2018 | www.indjst.org Indian Journal of Science and Technology 7
 Deciphering West Philippine Sea: A Plutchik and VADER Algorithm Sentiment Analysis
Government is considering at least two (2) areas in the
South China Sea for possible joint exploration with
China45. The Philippine President and Chinese President
have agreed in principle on jointexploration in the South
China Sea46. As a result, the Philippine Government is
taking its risk to have a joint venture with China in oil and
gas exploration in the West Philippine Sea. This could be
an excellent action by the Philippine Government since it
does not have the capability and machinery in exploring
and mining oil and gas. Moreover, if this will prosper and
with favorable outcome, the Philippines will surely avail
massive advantage in oil and gas as this could also propel
the economy of the country and the living condition of
its citizens.
Theme 3: Intensive Military Presence, Freedom of
Navigation, and Military Facilities Buildup in the Disputed
Island
The intensive military presence in the conflicted islands
in the West Philippine Sea hasincreased in the past few
years. As reported in Kyodo News, the commander of
the U.S. Pacific Command has warned of China’s grow-
ing military might, saying Beijing has unilaterally built
“seven new military bases” in the South China Sea. China
is nearly done building air and naval facilities on seven
on islands it claims in the South China Sea, recent sur-
veillance photos obtained by a Philippine newspaper and
published47. Following this events, China’s first-ever land-
ing of the heavy bomber on a disputed island in the South
China Sea punctuates a steady build up of military assets
that has solidified Beijing’s claims to one of the world’s
busiest shipping lanes48. Anent to this, the Philippine did
not do anything about this events, many critics are very
vocal suggesting to protest and ask to stop building a mili-
tary outpost in the disputed islands in the West Philippine
Sea. If this will continue, most islands in the South China
Sea or West Philippine Sea will be occupied and con-
trolled by China. As a result, the Philippine Government
will have no control over these islands including the natu-
ral resources it has.
Theme 4: China-Philippine Relations through Bilateral
Agreement, Trade, Military Support, and Security
When President Duterte became President, the
Philippine-China relation improved. According to
Foreign Minister Wang Yi in one of the press meeting,
since President Duterte came into office, he appropriately
handled the South China Sea issue and actively improved
8 Vol 11 (47) | December 2018 | www.indjst.org
the relations with China. Bilateral cooperation where
made such as tourism, economy, military, and security in
the region49. According to50, Duterte’s deeper engagement
and constructive approach towards China has already
started to yield economic dividends: bilaterally, multilat-
erally, and institutionally. Bilaterally, as a consequence of
President Duterte’s state visit to China, the Philippines
were able to procure $24 billion worth of financial help
and investment pledges ($15 billion in business deals and
$9 billion in official development aid). Part of this is a $3
billion poverty relief credit access that will be made avail-
able to micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
Theme 5: One China Policy through Territorial and
Defense Power
The One China Policy givesthe boundaries of claimants
on the different disputed islands, including in the South
China Sea showing the nine-dash line including Taiwan48.
The military presence in the different islands and building
outpost where among its activities47. It is the unification
of all territories of China based on its historical rights
showing the nine-dash line in the West Philippine Sea.
However, with this foreign policy that China imposes,
member countries of the ASEAN organization and
Taiwan reacted and apprehensive due to unacceptable
move or activities in the disputed islands where military
infrastructures and presence are visible.
The probabilities of having the same topics in the different
articles were shown in Table 3. For example, regard-
ing topic 3 with a theme Intensive Military Presence,
Freedom of Navigation and Military Facilities Buildup
in the Disputed Island, article1 has 58.19% probability,
article5 has 30.77%, article8 has 58.75% probabilities and
so on as so forth. While topic1 with a theme Assertion
of Philippine Sovereignty over West Philippine Sea Claim,
article2 has 52.19%, article11 has 46.92%, and article12
has 32.76% probabilities and so on as so forth. Also, topic2
with a theme Philippine-China Co-Ownership and Joint
Exploration of Natural Resources in the Disputed Islands,
article4 has 43.21%, article14 has 32.38%, and article20
has 50.76% probabilities and so on as so forth. Moreover,
topic4 with a theme China-Philippine Relations through
Bilateral Agreement, Trade, Military Support, and Security,
article3 has 33.85%, article7 has 50.17, and article15 has
53.47% probabilities. Finally, topic5 with a theme One
China Policy through Territorial and Defense Power, arti-
cle6 has 38.93%, and article17 has 77.74% probabilities.
Indian Journal of Science and Technology
 Las Johansen B. Caluza

Table 3. Article-topic probability of latent themes.

Articles Topic1 Topic2 Topic3 Topic4 Topic5
1 0.0819 0.0621 0.5819 0.2203 0.0537
2 0.5219 0.1594 0.1355 0.1036 0.0797
3 0.2154 0.159 0.1282 0.3385 0.159
4 0.2815 0.4321 0.121 0.0963 0.0691
5 0.1612 0.1465 0.3077 0.2454 0.1392
6 0.1557 0.2254 0.123 0.1066 0.3893
7 0.1463 0.216 0.0383 0.5017 0.0976
8 0.0791 0.06 0.5875 0.1583 0.1151
9 0.1131 0.1237 0.4841 0.1943 0.0848
10 0.069 0.0668 0.5234 0.2539 0.0869
11 0.4692 0.1475 0.193 0.0697 0.1206
12 0.3276 0.084 0.1578 0.3019 0.1286
13 0.235 0.068 0.501 0.1068 0.0893
14 0.249 0.3238 0.1571 0.1877 0.0824
15 0.1748 0.1388 0.0617 0.5347 0.09
16 0.304 0.1498 0.2775 0.1366 0.1322
17 0.0776 0.0537 0.0479 0.0434 0.7774
18 0.5854 0.0941 0.1324 0.1167 0.0714
19 0.2418 0.087 0.3913 0.1087 0.1712
20 0.2985 0.5076 0.085 0.0523 0.0566
21 0.2125 0.1 0.1875 0.3563 0.1438
22 0.1836 0.457 0.1172 0.1563 0.0859
23 0.5392 0.1054 0.0784 0.1814 0.0956
24 0.321 0.4233 0.0741 0.0741 0.1076
25 0.2426 0.0721 0.4754 0.082 0.1279
Underlying The assertion of Philippine-China Intensive Military China-Philippine One China
Themes Philippine Sovereignty Co-Ownership Presence, Freedom Relations Policy through
over West Philippine and Joint of Navigation, and through Bilateral Territorial
Sea Claim Exploration of Military Facilities Agreement, and Defense
Natural Resources Buildup in the Trade, Military Power
in the Disputed Disputed Island Support, and
Islands Security

4.2 Sentiments on the West Philippine Sea arbitration terms were obvious. Finally, 95% tweets were
neutral sentiments with Philippine, assert, want, right,
The sentiments of the Netizens towards the disputed
China, and red terms were apparent. In understanding
islands in the West Philippine Sea shown in Figure 5 is
sentiments, Netizens tweets were processed showing the
very evident. 2.67% tweets belong to negative sentiments
different clusters of the Plutchick wheel of emotions. As
with a pro, mean, gained, duterte, spooning, big, wonder,
shown in Figure 6, Joy (457 tweets) has the most predom-
antagonize, and expense terms were the most obvious.
inant emotion, followed by surprise (289 tweets), then
While 2.33% tweets that belong to positive sentiments
sadness (271 tweets), and trust (184 tweets). Lastly, fear
with assert, candle, down, sit, general, intelligent, and

Vol 11 (47) | December 2018 | www.indjst.org Indian Journal of Science and Technology 9
 Deciphering West Philippine Sea: A Plutchik and VADER Algorithm Sentiment Analysis
(84 tweets), anticipation (3 tweets), and anger and disgust
(2 tweets).
Figure 4. Plutchik wheel of emotion model.
Figure 5. Netizens sentiments on the West Philippine Sea.
The result implies that, despite the low percentage of
positive sentiments, many Netizens were happy, surprised,
and trust in the recent actions made by the Philippine
Government relative to the disputed island. In contrary,
many were sad, feared, anger and disgust, and anticipated
on some activities made by China and the Philippines in
the West Philippine Sea.
10 Vol 11 (47) | December 2018 | www.indjst.org
Figure 6. Netizens emotions on the West Philippine Sea.
This sentiments and emotions should not be neglected
as these are the actual feelings of the Netizens about the
disputed islands. The people should be consulted and be
heard about their personal feelings and emotion before
making decisions.
5. Conclusion
In this study, it reveals unexpected prevailing themes
hidden in the different news articles online were articu-
lately explored and exhaustively presented and discussed.
Among those themes were Assertion of Philippine
Sovereignty over West Philippine Sea Claim, Philippine-
China Co-Ownership and Joint Exploration in the
Disputed Islands, Intensive Military Presence, Freedom
of Navigation, and Military Facilities Buildup in the
Disputed Island, China-Philippine Relations through
Bilateral Agreement, Trade, Military Support, and
Security, and One China Policy through Territorial and
Defense Power. At the same time, the opinions, emotions,
and feelings of the Netizens about the current events
through news online was revealed through understanding
and exploring tweets. It revealed varied emotions where
most of the tweet clustered as joy, surprise, trust, and sad-
ness. Some emotions were fear, anticipation, anger, and
disgust. Finally, the process made in this study on senti-
ment analysis and topic modelings give a clear view and
directions for future researchers.
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