President Rodrigo Duterte’s supporters are among the most vocal on social media. So when articles about how the Philippine leader has established himself with the biggest following on social media, they seemed to affirm just how influential Duterte supporters are online.
We checked the articles out, which were posted by websites newsmediaph.com, socialinfoph.blogspot.com, pinoyspeak.info, and pinoyarticle.com, among others. Newsmedia and pinoyspeak, though, are included in Meme Buster’s list of fake and satire sites for sharing several misleading articles.
These articles have actually been around since October, based on the Facebook fan pages that shared them. Such pages include “Duterte News Media,” “Pres. Digong Duterte Solid Supporters,” “Kilusang Bagong Lipunan,” and “Duterte Global Warriors,” among others.
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According to the articles, the “DuterteTrain” has reached 50 million and shows how an election campaign can be pulled off using the Internet. They also claimed that the Philippine president is even enjoying support in foreign countries, such as America, Africa, and United Kingdom.
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Duterte and his “close-knit family and team of social media warriors” have broken Internet records as they gathered 50 million followers and have generated billions of views, as per the article quoting a Secrets analysis.
There was even a statement attributed to a top Duterte aide, saying, “The success to our social media is all Mr. Duterte and his messaging. What sets his social media apart from the rest is simple – since day one, he has been directly involved and he LOVES communicating with the Philippines people.”
But when we looked at the source cited by the articles, we found out that they were posted by bbc-channel.com (the website is no longer accessible) and fake news site thet1mes.com.
We have busted several articles from thet1mes, proving just how unreliable it is as a source, along with its statements quoted directly from the source, which turned out to be mostly made-up statements.
We also searched for who could really be the leaders topping the social media field in terms of their number of followers.
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According to Twiplomacy.com, which enumerated the most followed leaders on Twitter as of June 2016, US President Barack Obama topped it with 74.9 million followers.
We checked Obama’s official Twitter account and it now has 80.1 million followers.
As for the most followed world leaders on Facebook, we found another article from Twiplomacy.com. As of January 2016, Obama’s page is the most liked Facebook page among world leaders, with 46.4 million likes, followed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with 31.7 likes.
As of December 2016, Obama’s Facebook page now has 52.4 million likes.
Twiplomacy also looked into the most followed world leaders on Instagram, as of February 2016 and Obama is on top again with his over 6 million followers.
Obama’s Instagram followers have increased immensely from 6 million followers in February 2016 to 11.3 million followers as of December 2016.
We checked President Duterte’s official, verified Facebook page (@rodyduterte) and found that it has 4 million followers.
And we found a Twitter page claiming to be Duterte’s official Twitter account (@RRD_Davao). It only has 145,000 followers.
Obviously, thet1mes took Duterte’s supporters in for a ride by proclaiming that he is the most followed world leader on social media, when Obama is reigning on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Sources: (twitter.com, twiplomacy.com/facebook, twiplomacy.com/instagram)
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