What we say as leaders matters. Words don’t just describe reality; they shape it.
Team ByteStorm from the University of the East-Manila dove into Philippine presidential speeches from 1986 up to today (from Corazon Aquino to Ferdinand Marcos Jr.), covering both inaugural and State of the Nation Addresses. In total, there were 46 speeches.
Instead of just reading them, they crunched the data using RStudio and SAS Studio. After cleaning more than 11,000 words, they ran text mining, topic modeling, and sentiment analysis to see the bigger picture.
This was their Project for the Curiosity Cup 2025, a SAS global student competition where they placed among the best 15 from 112 teams, which is amazing!
Here are some results they came up with; more can be found in the full paper that is available as a PDF (see it under the main title of this article):
- The sentiment analysis highlights a right rhetoric balance “optimism with challenges”: presidents use uplifting language about progress and reform (words like promise, reform, win, freedom, great, and supreme pushed sentiment in a positive direction), but they also acknowledge challenges through negative terms such as poor, problem, corrupt, illegal, debt, and suffer.
- Presidential speeches are leadership tools, carefully crafted to shape national narratives, influence public perception, and justify policy directions.
- Core themes remain consistent: governance, economic development, and national progress, while each administration adjusts priorities based on its era.
The words do matter. And with the right software, we can see how much they really shape trust, policy, and public perception.
Well done, team ByteStorm! Hanna Sophia Sarmiento, Roman Paulo Baet, Ralph Lawrence Garcia, Franchesca Mari Morales, and their Faculty Advisor Sheila Geronimo.
