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TV still reigns supreme in PH: 91% get their news on politics and gov’t from television—Pulse Asia

Published Oct 12, 2021 8:38 pm

 Where do you get your news and how do you form your political views and opinions? In the age of the internet and social media, the medium that not a few have casually dismissed as losing its audience still reigns supreme.

According to the latest survey by Pulse Asia in September, 91% of the country’s adult population get their political news from TV, with 82% citing national television and 25% local television.

Radio is the news source of 49% of Filipino adults while 48% obtain their news about Philippine government and politics from the internet (48%)—particularly Facebook (44%). More than a third of adults (37%) cite friends and/or relatives as their news source while a quarter (25%) mention friends and/or acquaintances.

Newspaper is a source of political information for only 3% of Filipino adults.  Radio is a source of political news for most Visayans (67%), Mindanawons (64%), and those in Class E (55%).

For people in Metro Manila, the internet is a news source for 72%; for the rest of Luzon it’s 55%; and for Class ABC it’s 60%. Facebook is identified as a source by more than half of Metro Manilans (64%) and those belonging to the best-off socio-economic grouping (51%). 

Internet usage

Most Filipino adults (63%) use the internet with more than half of them (59%) logging on more than once a day. The rest of internet users go online once a day (22%), twice to six times a week (13%), once a week (3%), or less often than once a week (2%).

Internet users go online to check their social media accounts (99%); to read, watch and/or listen to things that interest them (53%).

Facebook and YouTube are the most popular sites among internet users (99% and 57%, respectively)

The survey found that 99% of people who go online do so to check their social media accounts. Meanwhile, a little over half of internet users (53%) access the internet to read, watch, and/or listen to things of interest to them such as movies, recipes, and celebrity news. The rest to do so to read, watch, and/or listen to news about the government (41%) or the elections (24%), to shop online (22%), to send, receive, and/or read emails (20%), and for formal and/or non-formal online learning (10%). 

99% of Filipino internet users own a Facebook account. Only 57% have a YouTube account while 17% are registered on TikTok, 14% own an Instagram account, and 8% are on Twitter.

In the different areas and classes, majorities of Metro Manilans (73%), those in the rest of Luzon (62%), and those belonging to Classes ABC and D (60% and 58%, respectively) have a YouTube account. No other majority figures may be noted in these subgroupings.  

Instant messaging

Additionally, 99% use a messaging app with Messenger being the most often used 98%. This is followed by Viber (5%), WhatsApp (2%), Telegram (2%), WeChat (1%), Hangouts (0.3%), Signal (0.1%), and Line (0.03%).

Almost all users of instant messaging applications talk to their family members (94%) and close friends (92%) via these applications while only about a quarter communicate with their co-workers (27%) and around a third engage with groups with similar wants or special interests and hobbies (36%).

The survey found that politics is not discussed by most Filipino adults when they communicate with different groups via instant messaging.