Social media has displaced television as the top source of news with 70% of respondents found to be high rate consumers of SM news (vs ~58% of respondents found to be high rate consumers of television news). Print appears to continue its decline with almost 50% of respondents found to be low rate consumers of print media.
This is according to the PAHAYAG End-of-the-Year survey, an independent and non-commissioned poll done by PUBLiCUS Asia Inc. covering the period of December 3-9, 2020.
It is a nationwide purposive sampling survey of 1,500 respondents drawn from a research panel of approximately 100K Filipinos maintained by a Singapore-based firm. The survey research panel was restricted to registered voters. Parameters based on respondent age and location were also considered in the sample formulation in order for the resulting sample to conform more closely to the features of the voting population as defined by statistics from the COMELEC.
The reading was divided by super regions: NCR, Northern and Central Luzon, Southern Luzon (SL), Visayas, and Mindanao.
Facebook and YouTube have near universal usage rates among respondents with most users found to be high rate users (~63% and ~58% respectively). Around ~46% uses Facebook for more than five hours while YouTube registers at ~37% use over five hours.
Netflix has overtaken cable television in terms of usage rates (~67% vs ~66%) and high rate usage rates (~32% vs 28%).
The changing media landscape will define the manner by which campaigns will be made for the 2022 national elections, considering face-to-face campaigns are hard to implement.
Based on We Are Social January 2020, there are 173.2 million mobile phone connections in the country. 73 million Filipinos use the Internet at 67% penetration rate and the same number are active SM users. Filipinos internet users aged 16-64 years old spend an average of 9 hours and 45 minutes each day on any device. The Top 3 most used platforms in the country are: Facebook (96%), YouTube (95%) and Facebook messenger (89%).
Nine modules were analyzed in this run: state of the economy and economic prospects, assessment of COVID-19 responses, national issues, leadership scorecard, emotional quotient of leaders, media consumption habits and responses to media campaigns, predisposition, travel likelihood, and blended learning.
The last PAHAYAG survey was done in August 2020, right after the State of the Nation Address. PUBLiCUS has been doing commissioned surveys as early as 2007 and launched its PAHAYAG brand in 2017 as its CSR, addressing the need for timely, relevant, and actionable information.
PUBLiCUS likewise introduced in its PAHAYAG surveys new metrics: Emotional Quotient (or the Love, Care and Solidarity Index), electoral predisposition instead of preference since there are no official list of candidates yet, as well as household sentiments to complement existing optimism metrics. PUBLiCUS also employs its proprietary software (CAPI instead of PAPI) to facilitate the rapid release of results. PUBLiCUS remains committed to ensuring data integrity and the quality of our analytical outputs.
PUBLiCUS currently uses a research panel (i.e. individuals recruited to answer surveys) instead of face-to-face due to the restrictions imposed by COVID-19 and the lockdowns. It is treated as a non-random sample as it did not give every element in the population a nonzero chance of selection, nor did it base sample selection through a fully randomized procedure. Instead, its sample is drawn according to a set of parameters or variables that conform to the population under consideration (i.e. samples have to be a certain age, gender, voter profile, etc.).
