Local Media–Derived Indicators for Monitoring Municipal Solid Waste Governance: A Text-Mining Assessment

Rapid urbanization has revealed significant limitations in traditional municipal solid waste (MSW) monitoring systems, especially those focusing primarily on technical and infrastructural indicators. While these approaches address operational aspects, they often overlook key dimensions like governance performance, service reliability, and public response. These aspects are critical for effective waste management but are less systematically monitored. Local digital media discourse presents an underutilized resource for real-time monitoring of these qualitative dimensions. This study conceptualizes local digital media discourse as a perception-based monitoring tool for environmental monitoring in MSW governance. A descriptive–analytical text-mining design was adopted to systematically extract, structure, and interpret monitoring indicators embedded in local media content related to MSW management. Five monitoring-relevant themes were identified, each reflecting distinct dimensions of environmental risk and governance performance: unsanitary waste disposal and leachate impacts; limitations in recycling and composting infrastructure; contractor performance deficiencies; waste picking activities; and public dissatisfaction with municipal services. Negative sentiments, particularly anger (32%) and concern (23%), were prominent, alongside expressions of hope (18%), satisfaction (12%), and neutral content (15%). Notably, critical narratives frequently co-occurred with concrete, improvement-oriented suggestions. The analysis indicates that local media content reflects aspects of governance performance and service-related concerns that are not routinely documented in technical MSW datasets. These signals appear particularly relevant in contexts where formal monitoring is fragmented or delayed.