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