An analysis of the online presence of congressional candidates

Comment

Comment by Johnny Agagon on June 1, 2010 at 11:14pm

it is now after the election and we can now conclude the simplistic experiment:

at this point in time, online presence is not a strong indicator for actual election results in mountain province. odsey and killip, have the strongest online presence based on the data above yet they finished the actual voting ranked second-to-the-last and last.

political machinery, name recall, vote-buying and face-to-face campaigning still rules mountain province elections.

oh well...

Comment by Johnny Agagon on April 27, 2010 at 7:41am

Kid, Liezel, Onilsky,

Thanks for the comments. There doesn't seem too much commenting going around here.

Liezel, what you already saw and read is the "experiment". I shouldn't have forgotten the quotes because it is not a real experiment. Its just an experiment in the sense that we have gathered this online usage data and we are waiting for the actual results to compare them. Then we will see if there is a correlation. That's it, simples. I'm not an anthropologist and I'm not a social scientist. I'm just that guy on the corner store, shooting the breeze with a group of guys, drinking beer and trying to analyze the elections in between shots and the Boy Bawang pulutan.

Think of the truly effective and proven campaign strategies in our communities. Currently, I would say effective techniques are house-to-house campaigning, tracing someones lineage and having as much relatives as possible, remembering previous assistance received from candidate, recommendation by respected friends/neighbors/relatives. On the other hand, other things that work in other places may not work in our communities - examples of these can be tv/radio ad campaign by Villar, using famous actresses (we don't really care about Willie nor Kris), religious leaders (we really don't care about Brother Mike, Father Quiboloy or Bro Erano Manalo), etc.

I am then asking the question, is internet presence an effective campaign tool in Mountain Province? Lets see the data and compare it with the results. Furthermore, if it is indeed an effective campaign tool, is it an effective predictor of election winners?

Its very non-specific and definitely un-scientific. Though I find this line of analysis interesting because this can be the very first provincial election that the internet could possibly influence.

Onilsky, I for one believe that if the internet can help an official get elected, it can also help provide community feedback to the elected official. Though I agree with you that this could be wishful thinking because even in advanced democracies (EU, US), the internet is used a lot during the campaigns but not as much during the reign. The world is still in the early stages of internet usage though so there could be future uses of the internet that we do not know yet at this point.

Kid, forgive me if I don't want to enlist in bibaknets. I was a member in 1998 but I found it had too much going on and that most of them don't really involve myself.

Johnny

Comment by Kid Malinias on April 26, 2010 at 10:39pm

Kid, Liezel and all,

Experiment or not, the fact is that the use of the internet as a means to
booster political agenda (of any type) in Mt. Province in particular (and
the Cordilleras in general) is relatively just in its inception stages. The
most relevant issue, therefore, is whether or not this type of activity
really works as intended. The results of this incoming elections may have
some say in that, although probably inconclusive yet at this stage. Besides,
if you have been a "regular" voter in the Cordilleras (or in the Philippines
for that matter), so-called written 'plataformas' of candidates come a dime
a dozen. Very good only during 'campaign' periods, and virtually unheard of
during the incumbent's term of office should he make it as planned.

Having said that, computer activities for or against a particular candidate
help in various ways. For one, it brings attention to the candidate - which
is what is desired in the first place - and this will, hopefully, be
followed by scrutinizing the candidate's credentials (and platform/s, it
goes without saying) and hopefully or eventually a positive outlook of the
candidate is formed in the prospective voter's mind. Goal achieved. To
deliberate, therefore, on the intricacies of the programs per se is, to my
sclerotic mind (borrow Manang Stef's), insignificant. But fun though,
admittedly. See, we are even lured to sharing our thoughts on the matter.

Just passing through (and by).

Onilsky

Comment by Kid Malinias on April 26, 2010 at 10:38pm

Hi Manong Kid and all,

Thanks for posting 'Johnny's' reply.
It wasn't very clear in his blog how
he is actually conducting his 'experiment' .
I am aware how surveys are generally
conducted which means polling a representative
sample of your target population. But Johnny
doesn't actually state if he is doing a survey,
interviews, or other methods to answer
his question. Unless the polls in Watwat
World and Micropoll are what he is referring
to as 'experiment' ?

As an observer, I think these election-related
online activities are very good projects. They
show that people are meaningfully engaging in politics.
(By the way, the blog is part of the website of
one of our respected candidates, Tom Killip).
But as ICT researchers often stress, we always need
to contextualize our 'experiments' and assumptions
with local realities.

Looking forward to the results of the MP
elections! May the best and most worthy
candidate win ;-)

Cheers,
Liezel

Comment by Johnny Agagon on April 26, 2010 at 4:50am

Normally in surveys, several techniques are performed on the design and selection of the samples to ensure that these are acceptable representation of the much larger whole. Our experiment is to determine if the small group of Internet/Facebook participants will prove to be this acceptable representation of the much larger whole.

Comment by Johnny Agagon on April 25, 2010 at 9:05pm

Kid and Liezel;


I look at these statistics for trends. Sure there is a lot of statistical noise (Facebook fans might not be registered voters, a few Facebook fans might account for most of the comments, some online voters might not be Facebook users, there is no weighting between a substantial post/comment versus a nippy "gud luck poh!" comment, etc). Nevertheless, we can infer insights from these data that we otherwise would not have known.

There are estimates that in Mountain Province, only about 5% of the population can be considered "online". And these 5% is mostly the young people who might not even be of voting age (e.g. high school and college students). Overall, the online voters are just a very small portion of the total voting population.

What is interesting is asking if the political choices of this demographic is a good predictor of the election winners.

There are reasons that it might be. We can say that these small slice of voters who are online are more educated and wealthier (computers and internet access are still indicators of disposable income in Mountain Province) and as a result, they may have opinions that other people respect. So its entirely possible that these online voters are major influencers in an election. Our experiment is out to prove if this segment of Mountain Province society can indeed exert major influence in deciding the winners in the coming election.

On the other hand, it is entirely possible that the online voters might be more educated and wealthier but they are not representative of the whole voting population. Take the case of the mock election results in Saint Luis University and in University of the Philippines - they almost always get the winners wrong. For one, there is such a thing as an ideal candidate (e.g. Gordon for president) versus a practical candidate (e.g. Noynoy or Villar for president).

As an aside, the SWS and Pulse Asia surveys sample about 2,000 to 3,000 respondents out of about 45 million voters in the country (about 0.006%) yet SWS and Pulse Asia has consistently correctly predicted that winners of national election over the years. (Nevermind the other partisan surveys, SWS and Pulse Asia have the proper design and implementation).


Johnny

Comment by Kid Malinias on April 25, 2010 at 7:24am

Hi,

This blog is being discussed in bibaknets. Below is one comment:

---

Hi Manongs and all,

This is a very interesting look at MP elections, indeed. I checked the blog site and the links and it's good to know that people from our place are using the Internet for this election.

But please bear in mind that in MP, there are 81,396 registerd voters based on the NSCB website (http://www.nscb. gov.ph/activesta ts/psgc/regview. asp?region= 14). Just looking at the candidates Facebook activity below, we can say that those who are 'actively' using the Net is just a little over one percent of the total MP voting population. And we don't even know if all those who are FB 'friends' or 'fans' are registered voters or not.

Maximo Dalog: 355 fans, 14 posts, 825 friends
Jupiter Dominguez: 524 fans, 31 posts, 48 friends
Thomas Killip: 688 fans, 101 posts
Franklin Odsey: 1257 fans, 75 posts

The Internet-related activity of voters are substantially higher for the presidential candidates than for our local candidates for a variety of reasons, I'm sure. For Bibaknetters who are candidates or are supporting candidates for this election, I wonder how you've used the net for your campaign?



Election-feverish,

Liezel