Despite stepping down from his post over a year ago, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte did not leave the headlines as he made a controversial remark against his daughter’s vocal critic and ACT Teachers Partylist representative France Castro.
In an episode of “Gikan sa Masa, Para sa Masa” on the SMNI News Channel, Duterte offered guidance to his daughter, Department of Education Secretary and Vice President Sara Duterte, regarding the appropriate utilization of her confidential and intelligence funds.
“Pero ang una mong target d’yan [sa] intelligence fund mo, kayo, ikaw France, kayong mga Komunista ang gusto kong patayin,” Duterte said.
The public lambasted the remark, with others urging Castro to file a case against Duterte.
On Tuesday, October 24, 2023, Castro initiated legal action against the former chief executive on charges of grave threat, filing a lawsuit at the Office of the City Prosecutor in Quezon City. Castro was legally represented by pro bono lawyers affiliated with the Movement Against Disinformation.
“Though factually baseless and clearly malicious, I cannot merely dismiss Respondent Duterte’s red-tagging and accompanying grave threats as either figurative, joking, or otherwise benign,” Castro said in her complaint affidavit.
“Considering that many victims of extrajudicial killings, illegal arrests and detentions, excommunicado confinements, forced disappearances, and other analogous attacks were called or labeled ‘communists,’ members or supporters of the NPA, ‘terrorists,’ and like labels before they were attacked,” she added.
What does the research say about Duterte?
A recent social listening report from Capstone-Intel Corporation said that the online mentions for Duterte received 84 percent negative mentions across social and non-social media platforms in the Philippines.
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.
Methodology
Capstone-Intel conducted a two-week backtracking of posts across social and non-social media platforms in order to determine how Filipinos reacted to the former chief executive. The agency utilized its customized social listening tools in order to gather data across all publicly available posts on social media from October 11 to October 25, which covers the recent remarks made by Duterte in order to identify the sentiments of users about the issue.
Sentiment analysis
According to Capstone-Intel data, Rodrigo Duterte received a total of 84 percent of negative mentions, while the remaining 16 percent were positive mentions across social and non-social media platforms. These mentions led to a total of 103,000 interactions on the said platforms.
Meanwhile, the share of voice, which compares detected topics belonging to Duterte, recorded “complaint against Duterte” as the number one topic related to the former president. This topic yielded a total of 19.6 percent interaction share, which reports how much engagement the topic involved audiences online.
Facebook performance
In terms of Facebook performance, “Rodrigo Duterte” garnered a total of 226,325 reactions, with like reactions having the majority of reactions with 118,131 (52.2 percent). This was followed by haha reactions with 84,953 (37.5 percent), love reactions with 18,247 (8.1 percent), and angry reactions with 3,167 (1.4 percent). On the other hand, the rest of the reactions, particularly wow reactions, recorded 1,054 and sad reactions, 773.
The overall Facebook performance of Duterte reportedly amassed a 48,702.9 total engagement score during the study period.
Top posts
Looking at the top posts the audience was highly engaged in about “Rodrigo Duterte, Capstone-Intel data revealed that a post from the official Facebook page of Cotabato Governor Emmylou “Lala” Taliño-Mendoza received the top post during the study period. This story, which accumulated a total of 2,743.3 engagement scores, is about the “Serbisyong Totoo” Caravan, in line with the “whole-of-nation approach” launched by Duterte.
The next most engaging story, according to Capstone-Intel Corp., is about a news report from 24 Oras that tackles how Duterte defended his daughter Sara Duterte amid the House’s plan to deprive government agencies such as the OVP and DepEd of confidential funds. This story garnered a 2,130.6 engagement score.
The third engaging story about Duterte was from a CNN Philippines report, which says the chamber is ready to provide security to Representative Castro following Duterte’s threat to the lawmaker. This story received a 2,118.1 engagement score.
