Social Media- The Game Changer of the Elections

The days remaining before the elections are running short! As of my last view of the television, it is 81 days before the election. You? Have you already chosen your presidential candidate? Of course, I won't be asking on who your bets are. But maybe after reading the article that I've found, you might have some sort of a "change of mind".

Nowadays, the influence of the advertisements of the candidates are so strong that they really show the extremities of the country's condition. Here's the article I've seen about the influence of Social Media to the Elections.

Will social media be a game changer in the May polls?

By Joey Alarilla, Yahoo! Southeast Asia



Sure, many Filipinos are flocking to social networks, seemingly obsessed with posting real-time status updates and interacting with each other online. But will this virtual beehive of activity translate to meaningful participation in the May national elections?

The role that social media will play in the upcoming Philippine elections was tackled at the Yahoo!-initiated Purple Thumb social media forum held on February 16 at the Hotel Inter-Continental Manila in Makati City. While some speakers disagreed on just how big a factor social media will be in determining who will win, they unanimously acknowledged that social media is useful for generating buzz and influencing mainstream media.

Howie Severino, editor in chief of GMANews.TV, and Arlene Burgos, head of social media of ABS-CBNNews.com, talked about how social media is transforming the newsroom and enhancing their coverage of the elections.

Severino cited the real-time updates that the GMANews.TV team is posting on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

“We call it rapid reporting," Severino said. "We don't want to call it microblogging, because this is journalism," he explained, saying that editors vet the social media posts, just as they would any news story that they publish on their site.

Meanwhile, Burgos talked about the passion of the citizen journalists, whom she referred to as citjourns. She cited the 62,994 citjourns who have played a vital role in the news organization’s coverage of historic events such as the death and funeral of former Philippine president Corazon Aquino.

Burgos said the Boto Mo, Ipatrol Mo project, which is mobilizing citizens for the electoral coverage, is at the heart of ABS-CBN's social media initiatives. “The heart of social media is that it allows the people's voices to be heard, in ways they were never heard before.”

Blogger, columnist and TV host Manuel L. Quezon III, however, cautioned against assuming that the politically engaged Filipino users of social media are representative of the majority of Filipino voters.

He pointed out that only a small minority of the electorate is active on social media, and that it remains to be seen whether a candidate’s online popularity will translate to actually influencing people to vote for them.

“Social media is just one more base for the candidates to cover,” Quezon said, explaining that they do not yet see it as a major factor in the elections. He described social media as a “political petri dish” which is useful for testing different strategies before they are implemented on other aspects of the campaign.

Quezon said the commitment of Filipinos to online causes is “fleeting, reactive and non-deliberative,” but while it might not sway the opinion of undecided voters, social media can influence the perception of mainstream media. At the end of the day, traditional media is still what will shape the political opinions of the majority of Filipinos, with television being the chief influencer. The results of the survey Quezon was citing are posted on his Tumblr.

For her part, Janette Toral of DigitalFilipino.com talked about how candidates are promoting their personal brand on social media and creating their own tribes.

“In everything you have to be a purple cow,” Toral said, using the phrase from Seth Godin’s book, referring to the need to be remarkable in what you do.

She noted how public opinion is being shaped not only by the social media campaigns of the candidates, but also by user-generated content, such as the “80 variations” of the popular campaign jingle of presidential candidate Manny Villar.

“I’m biased to be an optimist,” Toral quipped, saying she believes social media will play a significant role in the upcoming polls, particularly if the election will be a closely fought one.

From the other side of the fence, blogger and lawmaker Mong Palatino said that social media is good for activism, as he shared his own experiences during his talk.

Palatino, however, pointed out that many politicians rely on their staff to update their social networks, adding that some lawmakers have a low opinion of bloggers and citizen journalists.

“They’re prepared for attacks from journalists, but not from anonymous bloggers,” he shared. Palatino added that local politicians do not care that much about social media as most of their constituents are still offline.

Interestingly, however, Margaux Salcedo, the official spokesperson of former president Joseph Estrada, who is again running for the presidency, said they see the value of a social media presence even though most of Estrada’s supporters come from the C, D and E sectors who are offline.

“Erap is not a Tweep,” Salcedo quipped, candidly admitting that Estrada does not post the updates on the @PresidentErap Twitter account. This account is managed by his staff, including Salcedo.

She said, however, that the Estrada campaign team decided to incorporate social media to reach out to overseas Filipinos, and to gather feedback from voters who are online.

Game changer or not, the forum showcased the fact that social media is making its presence felt in Philippine politics, and this is a development that the candidates cannot completely ignore.



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Source: http://ph.beta.promo.yahoo.com/purple-thumb/editors-log-article?blogid=editors_log&postid=75&viewPost=1

Enjoy!

-Agbayani, James Edward C.-
February 18, 2010

Election Automation (Voting Process- BA 180.1 Activity)

So, the air is getting sweet as valentines day approaches. I could almost count the number of hours before it comes. Sir Jan surely has something to do that day. Well, we don't know, but we have associatied it with something related to valentines day.

Anyway! On to business!!

We had our first MS Visio emulated activity (since not all of us were able to use the actual MS Visio, and most of us used a sort of simulator; though, it looked like the same however.) Our topic was about the process of voting, from registration of new voters to the actual voting process. Good thing was, the process that we have to illustrate is the process of the newly-devised automated elections. It just didn't comply with the requirements of the class; it also helped new voters, like me, to actually know the procedures that we must follow to be able to cast our votes.

Our group had researched on the process. We built the model, added the captions, and VOILA!

Enjoy!!

Hello Blogging!

Whew. I can't even count the number of MONTHS that have passed after I wrote a blog entry (even though I placed it on Multiply). Well, with so many stuff to do (from academic life to other aspects of life), I can't seem to find another time to make another blog entry. Maybe a number of weeks will pass, but now, it must be once a week. Ok? ONCE a week, But I'm laughing at myself. I emphasized ONLY ONCE A WEEK, but I have posted 3 blog posts (including this one) which contradicts my emphasis.

Well, it has been another opportunity to speak out ALL SORTS OF THINGS, from scholarly views, to opinions, to experiences.

HELLO BLOGGING!

Election Automation (Technology VS. Itself)

Campaigns have officially started for the elections this coming May. Infomercials have been aired now on television, posters and flyers have already been scattered and posted and distributedNot only with that which we must look after. The first ever automated election shall happen in the history of Philippine politics. Yes, there will surely be a lot of changes with the system (counting procedures, voting instructions, and so on). People believe that the coming election will be reliable than the previous elections the country had. Of course, as a voter gives his/her ballot, the counting machine automatically counts the number of shaded circles it has, and automatically sets the counting up in an accumulated manner, in such a way that counting and tallying are done simultaneously.

However, in my own opinion, even though the method of election has surely improved, I still see some leakages in it, and worse, it may even create anomalies which may put the country into a state of disorder, which I pray that it will not happen at all costs. Technology is the reason why the automation of elections was born, and technology, may also be the reason for this election automation to mess itself up. I've heard news lately on some threats to definitely terminate the operation of the counting machines during the time of the election. Placing it in terms of a metaphorical statement, this is a battle between TECHNOLOGY AND ITSELF.

1. Hacking

• Lately, news reports have been telling that some government websites have been hacked by people said to be destined in Indonesia. Government websites should have the full protection from being hacked, as to not alter the arrangement, the content, and even the presence of very important files, especially those who have confidential files. Even though I don't know what the real intention of the hackers are, I thought that, if they can easily hack those government websites, how much more could they hack the servers that contain the election tally? Since it is electronic, changing it manually will be a hard problem, so surely, they'll alter it electronically. Moreover, since the machine is the one which is counting the votes, the operators may not be aware of the counting, and since hacking may be done, they may alter the counting, even though the operator of the machine processes a paper which contains the counting. The hackers may have changed that already.

2. Signal Jammers

• This is one very threatening item for me. I may not have the knowledge of how these gadgets work, but seeing it in a simpler sense, these jammers are a big instrument for altering the elections. They may use those jammers, to surely cut off the signal that will terminate the sending of the election results to COMELEC. I'm not sure about this other situation, but maybe it will be possible, that these jammers might divert signals from the counting machines to their own computers or receivers, then change information on the data they've receive, and send these instead to COMELEC servers. The jammers may act as a second staton that will bring information from the machines to them, then to COMELEC servers.

As of now, these are what are reported as some of the threats that might happen during the automated elections. Who knows, there might be someone who is already preparing a destructive program that could manipulate not just the results of the election, but also alter the program that operates the machine. Well, we don't know, since technology is improving as time passes by. In my opinion, let's suppose that there are people who really wanted to alter the election. For me, these are some of the changes that they might execute:

• Let the counting machine ONLY count the votes which belong to a particular candidate, and ignore the votes that belong to other candidates.
• Double the counting of votes of a candidate (make the counting machine tally 2 votes for a candidate instead of 1)

We don't know what might happen next. I've read a news article before that hackers were able to get through tht electronic security of the Pentagon, which I know, has the tightest security. That's technology- we don't know what it will bring next. It can create a new thing, and it can make the impossible to be possible. We don't know what the next generation technology can even do with our everyday lives. And I hope no one will use this technology for those sneaky plans. Of course, I will be having the first time to vote for national elections, and it is a privilege to experience in my first time to vote, the first try of the automated elections. Everyone wanted their lives to be prosperous, and through their votes, the results shall dictate what will happen next to the country for six years of service of the newly elected leaders.

-neofrostmourne-
February 10, 2010

The Challenge of the SIMPLE yet compleX- SIMPLEX

The Global Financial Crisis is still reigning around the world, although now, its effect are not as strong anymore as the time that it first came. Industries have suffered, but the workers had the most disappointing experience, being some of the people included to be forced out of their work, the only thing that lets their families live. Everything is in mild disorder- from politics being backed up with issues of corruption and anomalies, to firms and businesses having their financial positions miscalculated to have a good standing. Well, it appears that we'll just end up mocking each other with all of these lies! Besides, no one wants to see themselves failing when compared to the performance of their competitors. SO everyone's playing the game of strategy.

But then, nowadays, businesses have to be on guard with their management controls. Firms must be able to see the status of their businesses not only qualitatively, but also quantitatively. Indeed, most investors are on the track of taking the qualitative approach to be able to see if investing on these businesses will give them gains. However, only a few investors are looking at the quantitative approach of evaluating the performance of a firm. Even though the quantitative approach will give companies an objective stance of evaluating businesses, they still do not rely in it.

Why? Because,

1. Making the necessary calculations for some numbers like:

the Adjusted Current Yield,

Yield to Maturity (YTM) and the Yield to Call (YTC), 

and the Bond Price,

might take a lot of time before figuring it out since the numbers which are used to calculate these figures are ALL in millions.Transactions for firms and businesses do not come in units- they usually come with bulks and in packets, about thousands of transactions!

2. Analysis for important operational activities such as Transportation, Distribution, and Assignment may take a lot of debates if ever one of the members of the organization argues about a particular designation of a certain input.

This kind of a transportation model can be solved with ease,

But what it in comes in a situation like this?

Maybe the solution is this?

Whichever way you look at it, these methods are just alternative solutions, but doing it with a firm's situation is, nonetheless, more complicated and explicated than the models shown in the pictures. Firms do not have only one destination of transactions; they may have as large as a thousand destinations! The web model may even be confusing to look at.

3. These models and solutions, CANNOT BE SOLVED WITH MANUAL MATHEMATICS.

Mathematics has been the key for quantitative approaches. It has been the greatest process ever discovered to be able to produce quatitative outputs to be placed for analysis. Mathematicians could easily solve these problems using their knowledge.

But imagine them solving these kinds of problems:

• 
  
  A fifteen (15) or a (20) variable spreadsheet problem.
• 
  
  Transportation problem with 90 sources and 150 destinations, each source having millions of units each for distribution
• 
  
  Calculating the exact value of the YTM or the YTC.

It is indeed, a challenge for firms to produce these numbers which will give them the most accurate measure to judge the position or the performance of the firm. Although manipulation of information is easily done through sensitivity analyses, deficiencies are easy to hide, and one wrong move of data for presentation, the GAME is OVER. Quantitative measurement may be doubtful to show and believe in, since there might be instances that those numbers were either computed with great precision, or just picked up randomly. The technique of "Lying with Statistics" may even be adopted as a firm shows the results. Although these ethical measures are critical, businesses are, anyway, up to profit making.

Do we really need to just rely on qualitative information than waste time computing these quantitative values? It will save time, surely, but it will waste the basis and the prestige. Because of Information Technology, solving the quantities were made possible. Firms are now accurate on determining optimality, efficiency, maximization and minimization, and reliability. Everything is digitized as if everything is solvable now. Even though with millions of values and thousands of sources and destinations, information technology has made a way to show reliability on anything.

These are some of the application programs that I've encountered with relation to Business and Management:

• 
  
  Excel Solver
• 
  
  QM for Windows
• 
  
  Microsoft Visual Basic
• 
  
  Graphing Calculators
• 
  
  Excel Tools
• 
  
  Financial Calculators
• 
  
  Electronic Converters

This is a challenge that Information Technology has solved.

This is an innovation that Information Technology has introduced.

This is a thing that has been made possible with Information Technology.

This is a challenge that is simple yet complex- in mathematical terms, simplex.

Well, the only thing, I think, is left to be solved by information technology, is, the reliability of the words of politicians campaigning for positions such as President, Vice-President, and the Cabinet Members. Maybe, there might be a time that there will be a measure of reliability, aside from surveys, which will fully describe how this candidate will perform whenever he/she is elected. If ever information technology will find a solution to this, we'll surely be safe with our votes.

-Agbayani, James Edward C.-

February 10, 2010

(This blog entry was from my experience in BA 181- Management Science I. From our topics, I've realized that manually computing those models and problems are actually tedious. Our class can handle small sized models, but when dealing with large problems, such as the spreadsheet problems, maybe, we'll end up saying goodbye to that problem. Thanks to the presence of I.T., it surely is possible now to do such things...)