The race between faith and artistic expression is far from over.
Filipino drag queen “Pura Luka Vega” has once again made headlines after the artist was arrested for their controversial “Ama Namin” drag performance. In line with this, a recent social media report from Capstone-Intel Corporation revealed that Pura Luka Vega received 75 percent negative mentions across all social and non-social media platforms and a 57 percent laughing reaction due to the artist’s arrest.
Capstone-Intel Corporation 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
Pura Luka Vega frontman Amadeus Fernando Pagente was detained on Wednesday, October 4, for his involvement in the June performance of Ama Namin, a punk rock rendition of the Lord’s Prayer, during a Pride event in Manila.
The video gained widespread attention afterward and was criticized by prominent religious leaders and politicians. The performance was deemed “blasphemous” and “disrespectful to the church” by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines.
Meanwhile, the Philippines for Jesus Movement and other Christian groups filed a criminal complaint, leading to the artist being labeled “persona non grata” in 17 places around the country.
Vega, 33, was indicted with violating a rule that forbids “indecent or immoral plays, scenes, acts, or shows” that “offend any race or religion.” Possible penalties include a 12-year prison sentence and hefty fines.
However, days after the artist’s arrest, Vega was released from jail after they posted bail.
Methodology
Capstone-Intel utilized its customized social listening tools in order to gather data across all publicly available posts on social media from September 10 to October 10, in order to identify the sentiments of users about the topic.
Meanwhile, a three-month social media backtracking was conducted from July 7 to October 7 in order to identify the magnitude of the issue since its inception.
Facebook performance
According to Capstone-Intel’s data, Pura Luka Vega garnered a total of 138,907.1 engagement scores coming from the overall 698,814 Facebook reactions during the date of social listening, with 57.4 percent of the total reactions, or 401,141 being Haha reactions, while Facebook like came in next with 184,652 (26.4 percent), Facebook love with 62,066 (8.9 percent), Facebook sad with 33,098 (4.7 percent), Facebook angry with 13,202 (1.9 percent), and Facebook wow with 5,248 (0.8 percent).
Online mentions
For the past three months, Vega has received a total of 32 million social media reach. At the same time, Capstone-Intel revealed that there were 804 mentions for Vega across all social and non-social media platforms, reaching 272,000 interactions.
Of the total mentions, it garnered 75 percent negative mentions and 25 percent positive mentions, which means most people online framed the issue negatively.
Top stories
The story with the highest engagement was the Facebook post from Philippine Star. The mention of Pura Luka Vega was the story of his arrest, along with the posting of their mugshot at the precinct. It was able to gather an engagement score of 19,688.4 It is, however, also important to take a look at the kind of engagement that it gathered through the reactions. Currently, it has 14,475 (24.2 percent) Like reactions, 1,186 (2 percent) Love reactions, 30,069 (50.3) Haha reactions, 776 (1.3 percent) Wow reactions, 12,029 (20.1 percent) Sad reactions, and 1285 (2.1) Angry reactions.
For the second most engaging story, 24 Oras posted on their Facebook page regarding the arrest itself. This post was able to garner an engagement score of 12,235.8. This post also was able to receive 22,393 (26.5 percent) Like reactions, 1032 (1.2 percent) Love reactions, 59,842 (70.7 percent) Haha reactions 321 (0.4 percent) Wow reactions, 558 (0.7 percent) Sad reactions, and 454 (0.5 percent) Angry reactions.
Finally, the third most engaging story is from Kami.com.ph’s Facebook page. It has an engagement score of 7,918.8. As for the reaction breakdown, it was able to receive 14,044 (32.1 percent) Like reactions, 956 (2.2 percent) Love reactions, 27,232 (62.2 percent) Haha reactions, 256 (0.6 percent) Wow reactions, 426 (1 percent) Sad reactions, and finally 838 (1.9 percent) Angry reactions.
