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1 Electoral Introspection:

2 The Rise and Fall of Social Media in the Philippine Elections

3 In 2022, the National Election is approaching and by that time, Filipinos are expected to

4 elect leaders in the office. There are numerous ways for a politician to campaign their selves, it

5 can be through traditional machineries but in this particular era, social media is making waves as

6 a new form of campaign strategy. In line with that idea, this paper is established from the theory

7 that a politician’s social media visibility and popularity do not always translate to victory in the

8 election.

10 The rise of social media in elections

11 Social media visibility has been a crucial aspect that strengthens and manifests a brand’s

12 standing which has been a common strategy in marketing. It is a determining factor that builds up

13 and introduce your name once executed in a practical, strategic, and interactive method, it will

14 guarantee and certify the credibility of your brand (Kampen, 2017). However, this particular

15 technique is not only applicable in the aforementioned as it was also being used in the field of

16 politics. (Safiullah et al., 2017) referred to it as “political marketing” by which it incorporates the

17 principles of marketing and advertising in political campaigns, which eventually lead to the

18 modern media as its main arena.

19 With that, politicians are now turning into social media, creating their own accounts,

20 building their trademark, and actively participating in the platform (Narasimhamurthy, 2014).

21 Certainly, the Philippines is not being forsaken from this trend. The country alone is a record

22 holder of having the highest quantity of social media users, about 76.2 million of the population

23 to be exact (Sanchez, 2020). From that volume, it is not surprising that politicians will take
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24 advantage of those number and they in fact made use of it in the 2016 National Elections in the

25 Philippines. Presidential candidates utilized this technique to make people feel their presence,

26 broadcast what they are doing regardless if it was political related, or as a way for them to be

27 reached out by the community (Bajar, 2017).

28 Even so, there was only one spot for presidency, and the victory was claimed by Rodrigo

29 Duterte of Davao City. Among all the other presidential candidates, (Bajar, 2017) noted that

30 Duterte is the least engaging on social media who posted only twice a day in his official account

31 as oppose to Miriam Defensor-Santiago who maximized it for campaigning, active in 10 different

32 mediums in a span of month, and has a solid social media presence. Nonetheless, Duterte still

33 emerged and proclaimed as a “social media president” by (Bueno, 2017). This was because of his

34 strong fan base despite having a weak campaign, Duterte was equipped with a huge support on

35 social media powered by capitalized or even unpaid supporters, and fake and real accounts who

36 are continuously praising and uplifting him on the platform (Etter, 2017). Evidently, this has been

37 an indication of how advantageous and powerful social media is. This has been supported by

38 (Boynton & Richardson Jr, 2016; Contractor et al., 2015; Kreiss et al., 2017; Sahly et al., 2019 )

39 as they claim that it is as influential as traditional machineries and it is now a prevalent campaign

40 medium—composed of large scale of voters, and a two-way communication platform.

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42 The fall of social media in elections

43 However, in spite of the prior success of social media in the 2016 National Elections, its

44 effectivity has gone a long way. Numerous researchers stand by their findings that there is no direct

45 causal relationship between social media visibility and electoral win. (Bright et al., 2019)

46 supported this claim as they found out that social media visibility, particularly on Twitter, only has
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47 a subtle impact, which was about 1-2% vote shares, than those who did not have that much

48 presence on the platform. In addition to that, (Vepsäläinen et al., 2017) also laid out the connection

49 of engagement such as like and shares, particularly on Facebook to votes, which garnered 5.3%

50 error than the traditional ones, thus implying it as a weak indicator.

51 These studies proved its point as it was ultimately unveiled in the 2019 Philippine elections,

52 where social media visibility and popularity fluctuates and did not do much to the candidates. Take

53 Doctor Willie Ong as an example, who has over 10 million followers on his official Facebook page

54 alone, numerous social media groups under his name with thousands of members, and millions of

55 subscribers on his YouTube channel (Castro & Castro, 2019). Despite of that advantage, Ong did

56 not make it to the senate, he only gathered 7.6 million votes, not enough to grab a seat from the

57 Magic 12. The aspiring senator is famous in his own right on social media and that is without a

58 doubt but his influence, subscribers, followers, likes, and shares did not brought victory as it did

59 not turn into an actual solid votes.

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61 Its unreliability as a threat

62 Indeed, social media has played and is continuously playing an important role in electoral

63 campaigns. It is now part of the ever evolving process therefore it is inevitable to utilize it as a

64 weapon and tool. Social media can really be effective at some point but it is not dependable on its

65 own as it has its own rise and fall, and a fair share of advantages and disadvantages, given that it

66 does not always forecast what was being visualized in the platform. However, this particular issue

67 is not just exclusive to its relevant stakeholders because it can also directly affect the lives of the

68 people. If the matter of things will be right, social media can be a growth as (Hossain et al., 2018;

69 Ogola, 2015) have shown that it can amplify an individual’s involvement, awareness, and
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70 engagement to politics. But then again, this can also be the citizen’s downfall especially if it serves

71 as a way and instrument to electing pseudo-leaders who are not prioritizing people first, and will

72 just put the country in a much more burden.

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