The Philippine Media Monitoring (PMM) Laboratory of the UP Department of Communication Research organized a livestreaming event entitled “2022 Philippine Election Digital Landscape: The Case of YouTube” through their Facebook page last January 12, 2022, at 10AM.
The event has become the first in a month-long weekly research series on the networks of actors, issues, and practices in social media and the 2022 national elections. It covers mainly Phase 1 of the Digital Public Pulse (DPP) project’s findings that pertain to the 2022 Philippine Election Digital Landscape on YouTube based on data collected from May 9 to October 31, 2021.
In their livestream featured in their Facebook page, the PMM, which consists of a consortium of researchers in the fields of communication, political science, and data science, showcased its professional news organizations doing general election coverage from May to July 2021 singularly accounted 32% of all poll-related talk which are based on the analysis of thousands of digital data points.
Led by Fatima I. Gaw, MA and Jon Benedik Bunquin, MA, DPP depicts the interconnections among various accounts and pages in social media through the use of network maps, which surfaces potential coordinated messaging and posting, and the role of influencers during the 2022 presidential elections.
The DPP also noted mainstream professional media were increasingly becoming detached from the other clusters in the election network, weakening their influence over particular audiences. Instead, it found a strong complementary relationship between ‘official’ media sources and accessible and relatable YouTube news and political channels, and they make political agenda ‘personal’ and culturally resonant.
Together with Gaw and Bunquin in the DPP core team are Julienne Thesa Y. Baldo-Cubelo, PhD, Fernando dlC Paragas, PhD, and Ma. Rosel S. San Pascual, PhD, colleagues at the Department of Communication Research at the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication. Collaborating with the PMM Lab are Dr. Jalton Garces Taguibao, from the Department of Political Science at the UP College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, and Dr. Geoffrey Solano, from the Department of Physical Sciences and Mathematics, College of Arts and Sciences in UP Manila. Rappler is partnering with the PMM Lab for the Facebook component of the DPP.
On January 19 and 26, PMM will be releasing the rest of its findings for Twitter and Facebook, respectively, whereas on February 2, PMM will be presenting its cross-platform analysis.