A recent social listening report conducted by Capstone-Intel Corporation revealed that over 45 percent of Filipinos are sad about the recent bombing in Marawi, adding that 81.8 percent of the mentions of the event are negative.
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Background
Terrorists from the Islamic State have taken credit for Sunday’s devastating blast at a Catholic Mass in the Philippines, which left at least 11 people dead and 50 injured.
The assault took place in a university gymnasium in Marawi, a southern city, under five months of siege by Islamist terrorists in 2017.
The Islamic State group, which is powerful in the southern part of the nation, said via Telegram that one of its militants had set off the bomb.
A condemnation of “the senseless and most heinous acts perpetrated by foreign terrorists” was issued by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Following the event, security in and around Manila was bolstered by the military and police.
During his Sunday speech in Rome, Pope Francis prayed for the victims and asked “Christ the prince of peace (to) grant to all the strength to turn from violence and overcome every evil with good” in a separate written message.
Methodology
Capstone-Intel Corp. examined the online presence of the Marawi bombing in the country as a topic of discussion over the weekend, from December 3, 2023, to December 4, 2023, by utilizing all publicly accessible posts from social and non-social media platforms in order to gather the sentiments of the public about the bombing.
Facebook Performance
Capstone-Intel found that the Marawi bombing garnered a 27,686.2 engagement score for its 566 total post count, which yielded over 65,594 total reaction count. When broken down, “Facebook sad” accounts for 45 percent of the total reactions, with 29,531. Followed by “Facebook like” with 23,550 reactions (35 percent), “Facebook love” with 10,689 (16.3 percent), “Facebook angry” with 1,278 (1.9 percent), “Facebook haha” with 336 (0.5 percent), and “Facebook wow” with 210 reactions (0.3 percent).
Looking at the data, the majority of “Facebook sad” and “Facebook like” reactions can be attributed to several Filipino social media users mourning and sad over the recent bombing in Marawi.
Online mentions
Capstone-Intel likewise revealed that the Marawi bombing received 81.8 percent negative mentions, and the remaining 18.2 percent were positive mentions. This means that the article mentions the brand was mostly angled negatively, adding that the nature of the bombing made the article mention mostly negative. It is also worth noting that the Marawi bombing received 2,440,220 social media reach, while its non-social media reach yielded over 762,965 non-social media reach.
Top posts
In terms of top posts, the top post for the Marawi bombing was a news report from ABS-CBN News, featuring the official statement from Mindanao State University condemning the bombing, which received a 2,626.5 engagement score.
This was followed by another official statement from Silahis Publication, which reported the heinous bombing during the mass. This post yielded a total of 2,596.2 engagement score.
The third most engaging post for the Marawi bombing was an official video statement from Vice President Sara Duterte calling on Filipinos to be brave in the acts of terrorism, yielding a total engagement score of 1,591.4.
