Mr YoungJoon Koh4
4University of Sydney, University of Sydney, Australia
This paper explores how Facebook is used for promoting presidential candidates in the 2016 Philippine election. As for online activities, Filipinos spend 9 hours a day on the Internet. There are more than 41 million Facebook users. During the 2016 election campaigning, Rodrigo Duterte had utilized social media effectively. The Comelec itself used media to encourage citizen to participate in that election. Although not all politicians are into the Internet yet, digital media has become a prominent campaign vehicle. Hence, I examine presidential candidates’ activities on Facebook. Some findings in this article implied that Facebook is used as a place of a propaganda campaign even though it is a tool to form a personal network in general. Given that politicians in the Philippines struggle with issues of transparency, Facebook is only channel that allows the people to scrutinize presidential candidates.
Biography
YoungJoon Koh is a PhD candidate at the Department of Government and International Relations, the University of Sydney. His research project focuses on populism, populist candidates and election campaign in Philippines and Thailand.