The Philippines recently reported a decline in its inflation rate after a series of continuous spikes brought by various economic implications. In line with this, Capstone-Intel Corporation conducted a social listening report aimed at gauging the public’s engagement with the recent inflation report and seeking to understand how Filipinos react to one of the pressing economic concerns in the Philippines.
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Background
In October, inflation fell to 4.9 percent as a direct result of decreasing pricing across the board, particularly in the food and beverage industry.
The most recent figures, which were released by the Philippine Statistics Authority on Tuesday, November 7, are significantly less than the 6.1 percent that was recorded in September.
The rate of food inflation decreased from 10 percent in September to 7.1 percent in October, which was primarily responsible for the decline.
Rice observed its inflation rate drop to 13.2 percent from 17.9 percent, vegetables to 11.9 percent from 29.6 percent, fish to 5.6 percent from 6.1 percent, bread and other cereals to 7.4 percent from 8.1 percent, sugar to 4.9 percent from 9 percent, and meat to 0.8 percent from 1.3 percent.
But how was this decline perceived online?
Methodology
Capstone-Intel conducted a one-month backtracking of posts across social and non-social media platforms in order to determine how Filipinos reacted to the issue. The agency utilized its customized social listening tools in order to gather data across all publicly available posts on social media from October 10 to November 9, 2023, in order to identify the sentiments of users about the topic.
Facebook Performance
The data shows that throughout the one-month duration of the social listening study, there were a total of 1,652 posts dedicated to the inflation rate in the Philippines, emphasizing that these posts led to the 19,381.5 engagement score.
In addition, these posts also yielded a total of 53,682 reactions, with “Facebook like” leading the reactions with 34,161 (63.6 percent), “Facebook love” with 11,717 (21.8 percent), “Facebook haha” with 3,822 (7.1 percent), “Facebook sad” with 3,116 (5.8 percent), “Facebook wow” with 724 (1.3 percent), and “Facebook angry” with 142 reactions (0.3 percent).
According to the data, the Filipino audience viewed the most recent inflation report favorably due to the decline in its rate.
Low inflation rate, but higher negative mentions?
However, it can be seen that despite the impressive decline in the recent inflation rate in the Philippines, Capstone-Intel recorded 85 percent negative mentions regarding the topic and only 15 percent positive mentions. These mentions yielded a total of 15 million social media reach and 65 million non-social media reach.
In line with this, news websites, particularly BOL News and GMA News, hold the most influential sites for the recent inflation report, tallying a total of 9.2 percent and 9.1 percent of the voice share, respectively. In terms of the number of people these sites have influenced, BOL News and GMA News tied with 1.4 million reach.
Top posts
On the other hand, in terms of top posts, the two most engaging stories about the inflation rate were from Emmylou Lala Taliño-Mendoza, who posted a Facebook status about her local initiatives as a public servant to conduct information dissemination about inflation. This yielded a total of 1,920.5 engagement scores. This was followed by another Facebook post from the same page that tackles the Data Dissemination Forum on the September 2023 Inflation Rate with a 1,731.8 engagement score. The third most engaging post was from Work is Life PH, which narrates the implication of the inflation rate among Filipino workers carrying the brunt of rising commodity costs with unsustainable income. This story received a total of 1,417.3 engagement scores.
The post How Well Are Filipinos Interacting With the Recent Inflation Report? appeared first on Capstone-Intel.
