Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) — For a country dubbed as the social media capital of the world, the current state of digital campaigning of presidential and vice presidential candidates is unimpressive, an expert said Friday (March 4).
“We have this lackluster, unimpressive campaign in the digital space. We’d like to see more from the candidates [in terms of] how they use the Internet, technology in creating new organizations of voters so that they wouldn’t be dependent on the traditional politicians and political dynasties,” social media expert Tonyo Cruz said during CNN Philippines’ election roundtable on digital campaigns.
Cruz noted that he sees no clear digital campaign strategy from the camps of different candidates.
“As far as digital is concerned there is no concerted effort. There is no visible effort to transform likes into precinct-level, voter-targeted efforts. Any candidate could boast of having more than a million likes, but that would be meaningless at the polls because they wouldn’t know who are their voters,” he said.
Harnessing Filipino volunteerism
Cruz also noted the “outstanding” volunteerism of Filipinos.
“Anything that we do, if there’s a need to volunteer we’re really good at it,” he said. “There’s no difference in the campaign. Candidates have really good volunteers, but they are underserved by the campaigns,” he added in a mix of Filipino and English.
Cruz said candidates missed opportunities of involving their volunteers due to lack of “clear direction as to the objective of the digital campaign.”
“There’s no effort that could be seen as to how to translate these likes, follows into [actual] votes,” he added.
Also read: Advocates want a candidate who’ll push for fast Internet
Joining Cruz in the discussion was Andrei Natabio, administrator of the Duterte-Cayetano fan page for Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte and running mate Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano. CNN Philippines invited digital campaign managers of candidates in the May elections but only Natabio agreed was able to attend.
Negative campaign
One result of the lack of digital campaign planning is the proliferation of memes created by supporters that target rivals of the candidates they are rooting for.
“Those memes exist and they are being promoted because there’s nothing official to promote,” Cruz said.
Natabio admitted that there might be some supporters of Duterte who might be bashing other candidates. But he said that with all the fan pages on social media, they are having difficulty monitoring these.
He added that he and others volunteered to manage a fan page for Duterte to inform other voters about his platforms that are not covered by media.
Cruz, however, said he is still hopeful that things would turn around as there is still about two months until the May 9 elections.
“So let’s see. There’s still 60 days. Digital presents so many opportunities for an insurgent candidate with an insurgent message. It’s for them to seize this new arsenal not just for spin,” he said.
Related: Election Roundtable: Digital campaigns
