A social listening report from Capstone-Intel Corporation revealed that 64.7 percent of Filipinos are receptive to Smartmatic’s disqualification from participating in future elections in the country, with over 94.6 percent of negative mentions across all social and non-social media platforms.
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Background
The technology company Smartmatic was barred by the Commission on Elections from taking part in any future elections in the Philippines despite having supplied the poll body with automated voting equipment for 15 years.
The seven-member Comelec panel voted 6-1 to forbid Smartmatic from participating in any public bids or procurements related to Philippine elections.
Unless a judge orders otherwise, Comelec Chairman George Garcia says the commission’s decision is instantly executory.
Even though Smartmatic is neither under suspension nor on a blacklist, the Comelec emphasized the importance of preserving the nation’s election integrity.
“The commission en banc, in pursuing the instant course of action, recognizes its duty to uphold the integrity of our electoral process,” the Comelec said.
The electoral oversight board made it clear that the disqualification order was related to the 2016 Smartmatic bribery scandal and not the 2022 presidential race.
Methodology
Capstone-Intel Corp. examined the online presence of Smartmatic in the country as a topic of discussion over the month, from November 4, 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 Smartmatic.
Facebook Performance
Capstone-Intel found that the Smartmatic garnered a 4,489.6 engagement score for its 514 total post count, which yielded over 18,523 total reaction count. When broken down, “Facebook like” accounts for 64.5 percent of the total reactions, with 11,943. Followed by “Facebook haha” with 4,621 reactions (25 percent), “Facebook love” with 1,460 (7.9 percent), “Facebook wow” with 361 (1.9 percent), “Facebook angry” with 100 (0.5 percent), and “Facebook sad” with 38 reactions (0.2 percent).
Looking at the data, the majority of “Facebook like” and “Facebook love” reactions can be attributed to several Filipino social media users supporting the idea of probing the Smartmatic along with its disqualification.
Online mentions
Capstone-Intel likewise revealed that the Smartmatic received 94.6 percent negative mentions, and the remaining 5.4 percent were positive mentions. This means that the article mentions the brand was mostly angled negatively. It is also worth noting that Smartmatic received 26,358,632 social media reach, while its non-social media reach yielded over 6,131,033 non-social media reach.
Top posts
In terms of top posts, the top post for Smartmatic was a news report from CNN Philippines, featuring a report that Comelec is now undergoing an investigation regarding the president of Smartmatic meeting with one of the candidates during the 2022 elections, which received a 496.3 engagement score.
This was followed by another news report from ABS-CBN News, which reported the disqualification of Smartmatic as announced by Comelec. This post yielded a total of 363.7 engagement score.
The third most engaging post for Smartmatic was an official video statement from Atty. Larry Gadon regarding the disqualification of Smartmatic, yielding a total engagement score of 229.9.
The top posts indicate that even though a number of social media users are receptive to Smartmatic’s disqualification, the engagement scores of the aforementioned top posts are small enough to produce a wide social media presence.
