Published
THINKING PINOY
By RJ NIETO
RJ Nieto
Social media-based political blogs in recent years played a considerable role in shaping the outcome of the last two national elections. Unlike before, political strategists today allocate significant resources to monitor the opinion of erstwhile ignored political bloggers. Some politicians, for example, even go as far as mounting (or helping others mount) frivolous lawsuits, in a desperate attempt to silence them.
Yes, there had been attempts at limiting the influence of political bloggers. But after a few years (which, in online terms, is pretty much forever) of failed attempts, I think it’s safe to say that political bloggers are here to stay. I myself started as a political blogger in 2015, and I am still a political blogger four years and several social media algorithm changes later, even if I had eventually branched out to radio and print.
All of this hullabaloo stems from the issue of influence, or a given blogger’s capacity to affect voter preferences, political reputations, public policy, and the like.
But how is influence measured?
I use six metrics to gauge influence, metrics that I use to decide whether to rebut someone’s political opinion or ignore it.
That’s what we’ll talk about in this two-part series.
Note that instead of limiting the discussion to political bloggers, we will use the term “social media personalities” instead, so it shall also include pages of journalists, news organizations, politicians, government agencies, political organizations, and the like, as all compete for the pretty much the same audience.
Let’s go.
First is the follower count, which, back in the day, was the sole metric.
Of course, a blogger with a million followers likely reaches far more people than someone with just a thousand. But in the day where political bloggers compete for the attention of a typical social media user who follows multiple accounts (e.g., dog and cat videos, food, arts, travel, or even another political blogger), follower count ceases to be the sole litmus test for online influence.
Second is engagement.
Engagement is any action that someone takes on a social media post, such as likes, comments, and shares. It is more important than follower count.
A high follower count means people know a blogger exists, but it need not necessarily mean they are fond of listening to her. Have you ever wondered why traditional news pages and pages of public officials get only a few reactions, while some political bloggers get tens or even hundreds of times more than that?
For example, Facebook Insights data taken at 1:11 a.m., 20 December 2019, shows that the news site Rappler with 4 million Facebook followers had over 250 posts and 3.9 million engagements over the past week. News5 with just 3.6 million followers, meanwhile, published a similar number of posts but clocked 9.7 million engagements. These data suggest that people are more likely to ignore Rappler posts than News5’s.
But it doesn’t end there.
Third is follower intersection.
Suppose we have bloggers A and B. We define “follower intersection” as the followers of A that also follow B. Follow intersection matters a lot, especially when A and B have different stances on a particular issue, meaning followers of both A and B will have to choose A’s stance or B’s.
Take, for example, Mocha Uson and Erwin Tulfo. Uson has been promoting Tulfo’s posts for several years. Uson, in effect, encouraged her followers for years to follow Tulfo too, meaning they have a large follower intersection. That is, a follower of Mocha Uson is very likely a follower of Erwin Tulfo too.
Uson ran for a party-list seat in the 2019 elections under AA Kasosyo, while Tulfo was the face of ACT-CIS. Given that an Uson follower is likely a Tulfo follower too, and that the same follower can vote for only one party-list organization, then the follower will have to choose one over the other.
Many other factors that decide the outcome of party-list elections, but I think it’s clear what the Uson-Tulfo “follower intersection” generally chose, after Uson’s AA Kasosyo got 120,000 votes while Tulfo’s ACT-CIS got 2.6 million.
This kind of makes sense. After all, with all else being equal, a voter will more likely choose the more intelligent and more experienced candidate.
These are the first three metrics that I use to gauge influence, while the remaining three are:
4: Engagement per post, or the average number of reactions on a given social media post
5: External Aamplification, or the expanded reach of social media personalities through exposure via traditional media or involvement in political events and organizations
6: Content direction, or the general thrust of a personality’s content, such as whether it panders to the audience, thereby encouraging more follows, or whether it challenges its followers to reverse their leaning on issues.
I’ll tackle these three in greater detail in my next column. In the meantime, Happy Holidays!
For reactions, please email TP@ThinkingPinoy.net
https://news.mb.com.ph/2019/12/21/understanding-influence-in-social-media-part-1/
No comments:
Post a Comment