A social listening report from Capstone-Intel revealed that 42.7 percent of Filipinos are not keen on isolating and separating Mindanao from the rest of the Philippines as recently proposed by former President Rodrigo Duterte
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Background
The separation of Mindanao from the Philippines was raised by Duterte following the height of political tension between the Dutertes and the Marcoses.
According to Duterte in a briefing, local political forces in Mindanao would be regrouping here to start a movement for a “separate and independent Mindanao,” making the “Republic of Mindanao” one of the trending topics across social media in the past week.
This was the latest call of Duterte following his tirades against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. whom he called a “drug addict.”
Methodology
Capstone-Intel Corp. examined the online presence of “Republic of Mindanao” in the country as a topic of discussion for over a week, from January 30 to January 5, 2024, by utilizing all publicly accessible posts from social and non-social media platforms in order to gather the sentiments of the public about separating Mindanao to the rest of the Philippines.
Facebook Performance
Capstone-Intel found that the “Republic of Mindanao” garnered a 2,042.3 engagement score for its 150 total post count, which yielded over 6,555 total reaction count. When broken down, “Facebook haha” accounts for 42.7 percent of the total reactions, with 2,797. Followed by “Facebook like” with 2,785 reactions (42.5 percent), “Facebook love” with 876 (13.4 percent), “Facebook angry” with 42 (0.6 percent), “Facebook wow” with 33 (0.5 percent), and “Facebook sad” with 22 reactions (0.3 percent).
Looking at the data, the distribution of “Facebook haha” reactions can be attributed to several Filipino social media users showing disagreement on Duterte’s call to separate Mindanao, or his call to build the Mindanao Republic.
However, the “Facebook like” reactions can be seen as a neutral response – highlighting a significant number of Filipinos still undecided about their state of support for Mindanao’s independence.
Online mentions
Capstone-Intel likewise revealed that the “Republic of Mindanao” received 60.6 percent positive mentions, and the remaining 39.4 percent were negative mentions. This means that the article mentions about the “Republic of Mindanao” were mostly angled positively, but the negative mentions are also worth understanding as the numbers nearly hit the positive ones, as per the data, these positive mentions are attributed to social media content posted by Duterte supporters and some Mindanao residents who are supporting the call to separate Mindanao to the rest of the Philippines.
On the other hand, It is also worth noting that the “Republic of Mindanao” received 136,211 social media reach, while its non-social media reach yielded over 32,385 non-social media reach.
This means that despite Duterte’s claims to separate Mindanao being controversial, his takes did not receive much reach across the country.
Top post
In terms of top posts, the top post for the Republic of Mindanao was a Facebook post from News 5 about Duterte’s call for a “separate and independent Mindanao”. This story received a 570.5 engagement score.
It can be seen that the issue has been seen to be less interacted with by audiences despite the issue being raised by one of the famous political figures in the country – citing that Filipinos are more eager to resolve more pressing issues concerning the economy than separating Mindanao to the rest of the country.
