Study Finds 87% Negative Sentiment Towards ‘Marcos Dictatorship’
With the commemoration of the 51st anniversary of the martial law declaration, a recent report from Capstone-Intel Corporation revealed an 87 percent negative sentiment about “Marcos dictatorship,” while 65.6 percent of users’ reactions about the “Martial Law” shows a “neutral” response online. Capstone-Intel is a high-impact research company that uses innovative research technologies, tools, and methods to convert data and information into breakthrough insights and actionable intelligence outputs. It is committed to helping its clients solve problems, find solutions, grow markets and constituencies, build reputations, navigate risks, manage crises, and be the country’s leading private research and intelligence agency. Background In September of 1972, Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines, claiming it was the only way to stop the growing unrest caused by student protests, the new Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), and the Muslim separatist movement of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). Until Marcos was banished from the country on February 25, 1986, he practically ruled the country alone for 14 years. The proclamation was officially rescinded on January 17, 1981, but Marcos continued to act as dictator until he was deposed by the EDSA Revolution in 1986. This is the second commemoration of martial law under the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of the late strongman and namesake of former President Marcos Sr. Amnesty International estimates that between the years 1972 and 1975 alone, martial law resulted in the arrest and detention of at least 50,000 people. These individuals included church workers, human rights campaigners, lawyers providing legal aid, labor leaders, and journalists. Methodology This study was conducted from August 12 to September 12 in order to explore topics and discussions online about martial law and the Marcos dictatorship. Using all publicly available information across all social and non-social media platforms, Capstone-Intel was able to utilize its data to extract the number of engagements, public sentiments, and reactions of the public about the subject being assessed. Facebook performance, reaction distribution The data revealed that the keyword “Martial law” received a total of 6,555 engagement scores for the duration of the month-long social scanning out of its 462 total posts. At the same time, it garnered a total of 4,266 of shares, 3,722 social volume, and 3,260 comments. However, of the 19,340 total reactions, Capstone-Intel noted that there are over 7,058 (36 percent) Facebook likes and 5,806 (29.6 percent) Facebook love for the Martial Law commemoration which shows that 65.6 percent of social media users are showing a “neutral” reaction to the commemoration. Meanwhile, the remaining reaction distribution for Martial law recorded a total of 5,400 Facebook haha reactions: 985 for angry, 302 for sad, and 79 for wow. The data illustrated that the remaining reactions showed a diversified online response about the commemoration. Public sentiment On the other hand, broadening the scope of the topic, Capstone-Intel data also noted that across all social and non-social media platforms, there were a total of 86.7 (87) percent negative sentiments while only 13.3 percent showed a positive sentiment for the keyword “Marcos Dictatorship”. Top posts for Martial law In terms of top posts, a news report from INQUIRER.net that tackles the recent memo from the Department of Education (DepEd) to remove former President Marcos Sr.’s surname from the term “Diktadurang Marcos” in Grade 6 textbooks, which has drawn negative criticisms online saying that the removal of Marcos’ surname in “Diktadurang Marcos” is “an insult to countless victims of human rights abuses” during the martial law period. The said news report received an 88.4 engagement score, the results showed. On Facebook specifically, the top ten posts were fairly diverse in tone, as the content of each merely reported on the sentiments of prominent figures with regard to Martial Law. Both related topics of the curriculum erasure or the reinstation of Martial Law was tackled. The results also emphasized the nuances in each of the most engaged with stories. The third most engaged with story garnered an engagement score of 897.4. This particular post highlighted the statement of a Martial Law Victim, Ms. Etta Rosales. In this, it was empahsized that the association of Marcos family with the dictatorship of Marcos Sr. should not be erased from the educational curriculum. She was then greeted with 70.4 percent of lhe total reactions being Likes, then another 24.6 percent being Love reactions which garners a generally supportive reaction towards her statement. The story with the second highest engagement score cites the statement of Senator Imee Marcos regarding her response to the issues within the rice industry in the Philippines. This was able to garner and engagement score of 1369.2. In terms of public reception, the biggest percentage of reactions were the Haha reactions, which took up 88.9 percent of the total reactions. This is then followed by the Like and Angry reactions at 6.7 percent and 2.8 percent respectively, The Haha reactions indicate a general mocking-tone of Marcos’ statement that imply that it was received negatively. In a similar case, the story with the highest engagement on Facebook comes from a news site reporting about the removal of the Marcos name from the curriculum. The online reaction breakdown are as follows, 47.1 percent are Haha reactions, 24.3 percent are Like reactions, and another 22.7 are Angry reactions. Love, Sad, and Wow all take up the remaining 3.1 percent, 2.2 percent, and 0.6 percent respectively. Similar to the third most engaged story, the dominant reactions are the Haha reactions, which indicate that they are mocking the report, or worse, not taking it seriously, which can be considered a negative reaction to the topic. Topic interactions On this note, to back up the majority of negative public sentiment about Marcos dictatorship, Capstone-Intel’s data also found that the aforementioned “textbook revision” topic garnered a 42 percent share of voice and 23.10 interaction share. This means that with the increased share of voice about the revision issue, it reveals that several social media users are interacting about
