Courting voters online: Will it work?

About 30 million Filipinos have Facebook accounts, with the biggest group aged 18 to 24 years old.

With a reach like that, social media is an attractive tool for candidates to gain exposure with potential voters.

There’s no hard evidence that “followers turn into voters“ but with figures like that “why not take a chance and use social media?” asked lawyer Ethelbert Ouano.

Ouano, legal counsel of the Cebu Bloggers Society, spoke on the use of social media in elections during the quarterly meeting of the Cebu Citizens-Press Council yesterday.

“A social media campaign done right will certainly have an impact on the outcome of the elections.”

Athough they differ in approaches, Cebu’s leading gubernatorial candidates are active on line.

One Cebu gubernatorial candidate Pablo John Garcia maintains a personal Facebook and Twitter account. He often updates them with jokes and photos.

The Liberal Party’s standard bearer Hilario Davide III has a Facebook account, website, and  Twitter. His accounts are handled by a team of social media managers who update content with photos and videos of their recent campaign sorties.

“Cebu has a very big voting population, not everyone can be visited but they can be reached through social media. It has a great influence. It is a tool to get feedback and reactions on issues that need to be discussed,” said Ethel Natera, LP Cebu spokesperson in an interview.

Ouano, who teaches law in a university in Cebu, said social media is a potent medium for political campaigns.

“No candidate can afford to ignore social media as the number of social media users in a locality can be higher than the margin of victory,” Ouano said.

He pointed out that President Aquino won the 2010 election with 15 million votes. Compare that with 30 million Filipinos on Facebook, he said, where most users are young voters aged 18 to 24. The next biggest group is 25 to 34 years old.

Davide’s Facebook fan page by the name of Hilario P. Davide III (Junjun) has 1,671 ‘likes’, Twitter account @junjundavide13 has 42 followers as of yesterday’s count.

His team maintains a website https://davidemagpale2013.com where visitors can click a button to become a volunteer and download campaign materials.

Garcia’s Facebook account Pablo John Garcia has 1,058 followers, his Twitter account @pablohohncebu has 1,197 followers. One Cebu party has an official Facebook page with 454 people liking the ‘topic’.

“It is really difficult to measure. Hopefully it will turn to votes. Social media reaches a good number of the populace and hopefully our call for change will become a word of mouth,” Natera told Cebu Daily News.