Analisis Sentimen dan Tema Komentator YouTube terhadap Pembentukan Universitas Republik Indonesia

Abstract

The establishment of Universitas Republik Indonesia (URI) in 2026 generated digital discussions concerning institutional urgency, public expenditure, educational access, governance, and human resource development. This study identifies sentiment distribution, maps substantive themes, and compares sentiment patterns across two YouTube comment corpora discussing URI. A quantitative descriptive design was employed using text-based content analysis and target-oriented contextual sentiment coding. The initial dataset contained 579 comments, comprising 330 comments in Corpus A and 249 in Corpus B. Data auditing identified 37 spam/off-topic comments in Corpus B, resulting in a final analytical corpus of 542 comments. Sentiment classification considered evaluative direction toward URI, rhetorical questions, negation, informal language, irony, sarcasm, and ambivalence. Thematic analysis used multi-label, keyword-assisted contextual coding. The findings show that 477 comments (88.0%) were negative, 19 (3.5%) positive, and 46 (8.5%) neutral or ambivalent. Negative sentiment accounted for 89.1% of Corpus A and 86.3% of Corpus B. A chi-square test found no significant association between corpus source and sentiment category, χ²(2)=1.62, p=.445, Cramér’s V=.055. Dominant themes were corruption and fiscal burden (39.9%), institutional redundancy (16.1%), education and employment priorities (11.6%), elitism and patronage (11.4%), and militarization/centralization of power (5.7%). Resistance in the analyzed corpora primarily concerns governance trust, public-resource priorities, institutional differentiation, and fairness of access. Because YouTube comments represent self-selected participation, the findings should not be generalized as Indonesian public opinion.