Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

This study explores the political arena of the Philippines on which the country’s political landscape has taken a dramatic shift in leadership due to the explosion of social networking sites (SNSs) that occur in social media such as Facebook. This paper provides the current Philippine president’s supporters and critics’ Facebook pages on social media networks’ description and analyses of their SNSs dataset using NodeXL program. There are three main focuses of the study: (1) implications of the demographic differences of both fan page networks in terms of age, location, and political affiliation, (2) comparative data analyses of the difference in the connected vertices/nodes (e.g., density, diameter, and connected components) of the two opposing networks, the supporters and critics Facebook pages, and finally, (3) identifying the “who” plays the roles of the main speakers, mediators, and influencers in a social network structure of the Philippine president’s supporters and critics on Facebook. Results show that 56% members on both fan pages; the supporters and critics are on their 30s. For the networks’ description, the supporters’ page group showed denser connected components compared to the critics’ page on the May 25th issue about the declaration of the Martial Law by the president. Lastly, the networks’ metrics results show the main speakers, negotiators, and influencers are media bloggers, social media users in the country and the overseas foreign workers (OFWs). The overall findings of this study show that both networks have strong signs of real-life communities in a social media landscape.