Perception of urban renewal plan in Malaysia: a sentiment analysis of tiktok comments

Pang, Jie Xin (2026) Perception of urban renewal plan in Malaysia: a sentiment analysis of tiktok comments. Master dissertation/thesis, UTAR.

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Abstract

The Urban Renewal Plan in Malaysia has become a highly debated issue, generating considerable controversy and widespread public attention. Much of this discussion has unfolded on social media, where people actively express their thoughts, concerns, and frustrations about how the plan may affect their homes, communities, and future living conditions. TikTok is selected as the main platform for analysis because it provides a highly active, spontaneous, and real-time space where users openly share unfiltered opinions and emotions, making it suitable for capturing authentic public sentiment on urban policy issues. In this context, the study explores public responses to the Urban Renewal Plan by focusing on TikTok discussions. Data were collected from TikTok by searching relevant keywords and hashtags such as “Urban Renewal Plan”, “Urban Renewal Act”, “URA Malaysia”, and “#urbanrenewal” to retrieve related videos and user comments for analysis. A quantitative content analysis approach is then used to examine the comments by categorising them into key narrative groups. From the analysis, five main narratives were identified, namely fear, resistance, responsibility, support, and sadness. Among these, fear is the most dominant and is closely linked with resistance, indicating that public reactions are largely shaped by uncertainty, financial pressure, and concerns about displacement, while other narratives appear less frequently and in more limited forms. The findings reveal that public sentiment on TikTok is largely negative, although there are still some voices of support that depend on conditions such as transparency and fairness. This study highlights how social media reflects the emotional and opinion-based responses of the public, and how these online discussions can provide meaningful insight for policymakers when considering urban renewal policies. Keywords: Urban Renewal Act; Redevelopment; Policy; Online Sentiment; TikTok Subject Area: HT170-178 Urban renewal. Urban redevelopment

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