Social media and political propaganda

The first leg of the presidential debates initiated by the Commission on Elections and two media organizations continues to buzz mainstream media,  especially the Internet-based social networking services and online news sites, that I think political camps are now, more than ever, convinced  that new media platforms will greatly impact the 2016  presidential elections.

Interestingly, as the five presidential candidates went on stage for the first presidential face off in 24 years, the social networking site Facebook released its 2nd annual “State of Connectivity” report which said that 200 million more people gained Internet access in 2015, citing affordability of online data and rising global incomes.

In all, “the number of people worldwide with Internet access reached 3.2 billion at the end of 2015 but the remaining 4.1 billion,” mostly from poor countries are still offline, according to the Facebook study.

The figures suggest that out of 7.2 billion world population, the other half is not represented online.   Hear this, of the 3.2 billion people worldwide having Internet access, 2.1 billion maintain social media accounts.

Last year, a report by the Asia Digital Marketing Association (ADMA) and the Internet World statistics said that over a billion, or more than 46% of Internet users, are in the Asia-Pacific region.  The Philippines specifically has more than 44.2 million users, the second highest ranking in Southeast Asia and the 6th in the whole of Asia.  The same report said that of 44.2 million Internet users in the PH, 90 per cent have active social media accounts. That’s more or less 40 million active FB, Flicker, Instragram, Tumblr users.

If Julian Persaud, former Google Managing Director in SE Asia, is to be believed, this number will hit double this year.  Conservatively, there will be around 80 million Internet users in the PH by the end of 2016.  Since we are only in the first quarter of the Year of the Monkey, we can safely assume there are 50 million Internet users in the Philippines at this moment, with 45 million getting their minimum daily requirement of news, entertainment and celebrity gossips from social network services.

I think the figures are notable against the backdrop of the latest Comelec data that say half of the 54.37 million registered voters are millennials or young people aged 18 to 34.  With that data, politicians will shape if not retool their political propaganda to suit the lifestyle of young demographics.

No wonder, even before the presidential debates can be mounted, online news sites and social network services went on hard drive for posts that favor certain bets and conversely attack the rival candidates.

I can imagine that when the presidential debates finally opened and broadcast live, hard core supporters who watched the debate inside the public venue and those who followed the program outside had their smartphones with mobile Internet connections and laptops with fixed Internet ready to transmit their subjective opinions to the rest of the world.

The post-debate online traffic was even more maddening on social media.

One minute you read about an online survey conducted by Rappler which said that Rodrigo Duterte came out the winner.  Next you come across another survey supposedly by the Inquirer.net which showed Mar Roxas on top of the heap, and then you read about opinions by political analysts that say Senator Grace Poe was the real winner.  I have yet to come across a post-debate survey that favored Vice President Jejomar Binay but nobody can really say if we have seen the end of post-debate polling in the world of social media

Overwhelmed by the traffic of partisan updates by many FB users after the presidential debate, my media colleague Jhunnex Napallacan lamented that social networking sites were being flooded by negative campaigning.  Well, I know of some friends who are motivated by a strong sense of political belief, but there are also social media propagandists called trolls, whose only preoccupation is to exalt their principal and malign his rivals.

As a media professional for more than four decades, I can say that although the Internet and other web-based media platforms have filled the users’ demand for information, there’s a dangerous downside that further widens the political divide and muddles the political issues.  Most FB users tend to consume only bursts of information which does not foster a habit for reading news analysis or even fact-checking to gain a better understanding of political events.  For example, I saw a FB update that featured a screen grab of US President Barack Obama and below his image, an overlaid text that said he is for Rodrigo Duterte.

Technology is indeed a double-edged sword.  It is like fire which can cook our food but can also burn us, to quote a TV personality.  My advice is, be selective in your consumption of online information and news on social media.