Malaysians unite with #PrayForPasirGudang
Pasir Gudang gained the nation’s attention after a chemical pollution broke out at the area. The incident was caused by an illegal waste dumping at the Kim Kim River on March 6.
The first outbreak from the pollution occurred on March 7. Swiftly, Twitter users tweeted on the matter.
Based on the network of “Pasir Gudang Chemical Pollution” issue, tweets from the account @shfiqzahari gained the most responses. He voices his opinion regarding the matter in his tweets. Whereas, other Twitter users who shared image of the victims did not received as much responses as @shfiqzahari.
Unfortunately, the issue got worse few days later as more victims were affected from the chemical pollution. On March 13, Education Minister Maszlee Malik said that the situation has reach a critical level as 34 schools was shut down with more than 300 people affected.
In Twitter, the chemical pollution has become a trending topic, leading to the viral usage of the hashtag, #PrayForPasirGudang.
The network of the topic quickly expanded into several cluster, forming more influencers such as @999Malaysia, @sheqalrosli, @DrBeniRusani and @dira_karim.
The orange cluster is mainly influence by @999Malaysia. The account update on the chemical pollution victims, sometimes with the format of video.
Next, @dira_karim lead the green cluster. The account also shows concern towards the victims, focusing more on the students. The users responded to @dira_karim hope that a strategy will be taken to resolve the incident to avoid further diseases.
Meanwhile, the light blue cluster provide the official news to the Twitter users. The influencers include @501Awani (Awani News) and @KKMPutrajaya (Malaysia Health Ministry). This indicate that the Health Ministry is the active ministry to tweet about the outbreak.
Despite having different influencers, the network shows that there is a high amount of Twitter users who used the hashtag, #PrayForPasirGudang.