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A brief look: New media and

the pollsBy Angeli Sabillo, Blogwatch

It is interesting to look into past elections (including themost recently concluded one) and compare differenttrends in media and advertising. Media in its differentforms has continued to evolve and increasinglyaccommodate political content and advertisements. Unregulated cyberspace

In the past, radio stations offered packages tocandidates in the form of airtime for interviews andmentions. This was to help boost visibility in spite of theadvertising ban for candidates. The ad ban, regimented through the Omnibus Election Code, was meant to levelthe playing field since wealthier candidates could

definitely gain more awareness and popularity by using mass media. This did not stop moneyed candidates assome subtly got around the ban through backdoor agreements of paid interviews and endorsements . The banwas later lifted and the government turned to regulating advertisements (the reason why political TV adsbecame so popular by the turn of the millennium), but candidates continued conducting paid interviews andpublicity to get around the ad and spending limit.

Now the ad battle has reached cyberspace - with endless opportunities to popularize and attack candidates -but with limited reach.

Noynoy Aquino, who got more than 13 million votes (at least at the moment) had just over a million Facebookfans before his page was supposedly hacked , and demographics are somehow unknown - how many votersare online?

As the campaign started, ads of presidentiables (as well as black propaganda against opponents) appeared onYahoo, Facebook, and other popular sites. Sadly, there is no body to monitor online campaigning. An articlefrom PCIJ points out the obvious lack of regulation online as well as good and black propaganda found online.

Villar's website was also supposedly hacked, and anti-Villar ads also came out during the campaign period.

Trending and Citizen Journalism

The election has indeed become a trending topic online (see another interesting blog giving out awards to bestand worst political commercials ), with the popularity of Twitter celebrity @PCOSmachine (read articles fromGMANews.tv and ThePOC.net -- see the man behind it) and the flood of election-related complaints on socialnetworking sites.

Concerned citizens and alternative media practitioners cultivated the new media to publicize unreportedviolence or fraud. One outfit, Kodao Productions, was able to film a two-hour gunfight at a polling center inTugaya, Lanao del Sur. One young woman was killed as thousands of voters fled from their precincts,disrupting elections. The video was later broadcast and its reporter was interviewed in various GMA 7 newsprograms.

Facebook community after May 10

Right after the first batch of election results, Facebook users were jabbing away at their computers,contemplating the interesting turn of events.

One user posted that if Noynoy Aquino (clear winner for the presidency) is serious about land reform, he shouldmake Satur Ocampo - one of his critics on the Hacienda Luisita case - secretary of the Department of AgrarianReform .

Then there are of course "forward-looking" fanpages and groups such as "Kris Aquino's Despedida," "NoynoyAquino III - 15th President of the Republic of the Philippines" (created hours after the results started coming in),"Gibo Teodoro for Senator 2013," "Dear Noynoy," and "Agenda ng Bayan." The latter two aim to serve as avenue for ordinary people to express their grievances and suggestions for the next president.

One particular page calls for the jailing of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to finally get accountability for allthe scandals, cases, and crimes she had been involved in, while some had already posted an event entitled"One Big Pinoy Party to Boot out Gloria Macapagal Arroyo."

The "I voted during the first automated election in the Philippines" fanpage already had 13,000 fans by theevening of May 11.

Angeli Sabillo primarily writes for the news and politics sections of the Philippine Online Chronicles. ThePhilippine Online Chronicles is both a media network and news aggregator, a platform for alternative viewpointsand a synthesizer of ideas. It reports facts of the news as well as viewpoints on the news.

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