Diorella Maria “Lala” Sotto-Antonio is the current chairperson of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board, and she has been in office since July 2022. Recently, she has been the center of social media backlash due to her announcement of the 12-day suspension for the hit noontime show “It’s Showtime.” Capstone-Intel Corporation looks into the current reputation and how it has been affected on social media.
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
From August 25 to September 25, 2023, Capstone-Intel utilized its social listening tools in order to scan publicly available Facebook pages for their posts that mention the name “Lala Sotto.” It should be noted that there were no specific demographics or personal data that were tracked.
The tool itself was able to scan 465 posts with a consolidated 130,942 comments, 11,748 shares, a reaction count of 612,558 total, and an engagement score that reached 86,098.
Results from Facebook performance
The total reaction count on the consolidated mentions on Facebook can be broken down into the following percentages: the Haha reaction garnered the highest percentage of 68.5 percent of the total, with 419,600 Haha reactions. This is then followed by the Like reaction at a count of 139,523, which makes up 22.8 percent of the total reactions. Angry reactions take up the next 3.8 percent, with a count of 23,214. Love reactions follow after with 3.4 percent for their 20,922 reactions. Finally, the Sad reactions take up the last 1.2 percent with a count of 7,348 reactions.
The data on the reactions come from a consolidated total across all the 465 posts on Facebook. While generally, a high Haha reaction may be difficult to classify as merely positive or negative, looking at the specific posts from which the reactions were derived to generate a clearer sentiment.
Dominant reaction, top stories
One of the stories with an engagement score of 4687.6, that mentions Sotto was one posted by entertainment news and lifestyle website Pep PH. This story is insistent on the fact that there was no bias involved in the decision to suspend the Kapamilya flagship show “It’s Showtime.” The notable reaction to this post would be the extremely high count of Haha reactions at 17,057. It also has the highest reaction count out of the other reactions.
This indicates that users may find her reaction amusing, or rather that the statement was one that they were not taking seriously, hence the large number of Haha reactions on Facebook. It also starts a notable trend among the posts that mention Sotto, wherein the stories with the highest engagement scores also tend to have high counts for the Haha reaction.
This was also observed in another story posted by 24 Oras, wherein the story was about the release of Sotto from her position at the UP Diliman Department of Broadcast Communications. This story was able to garner an engagement score of 2,291. Though the highest reaction count is the Like reaction at 9,718 (56.4 percent) the second highest reaction is still the Haha reaction with an equally significant 6,211 (36 percent) reaction count.
A final example of this pattern would be through the post from Balita that was posted on Facebook. In the post, they highlighted the statement of Sotto that it would aid in the issue of the suspension of the show if “It’s Showtime” personalities Vice Ganda and Ion Perez issued a public apology for their actions.
This story was able to garner an engagement score of 2,197.4, primarily attributed to the 13,680 number of Haha reactions that this post was able to gather. This makes up 82.2 percent of the total reactions on this post. Just as with the other two top stories, it indicates that the majority of the users online who have seen this post either do not agree with the statement or are not taking the statement seriously.
In conclusion, the general sentiment of Filipino Facebook users can be linked to their use of the Haha reaction and how it indicates a less-than-favorable perspective on Sotto and her statements online.
