Social media power waning?

“How much influence did social media have on the results of the recent elections in our country?”

- THE VIEW FROM RIZAL DR. JUN YNARES

Some media practitioners and colleagues in the local government sector have been asking me this question since the conclusion of the electoral exercise last month. They wanted my view on what appears to be an emerging discussion: The ability of social media and so-called influencers to sway voters and influence their choice of who to vote for.

This is a subject worth taking a deep look into. After all, as of 2023, there are already some 92.1 million social media users in the country, according to the Digital Philippines report. In the 2022 elections, the Comelec Digital Monitoring reported a total of 250-plus million election-related posts. In the polls of that year, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism reported that a total of P786 million was spent by political aspirants on Facebook advertising.

My view is that social media, in the recent elections, continued to facilitate interaction among voters, as well as candidates and the electorate. This is what this platform had done in the last two elections. Social media has been a major source of information. It is interesting, the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation in social media seems to have also hit the roof in the past election.