Comment Re:Social media: overrated (Score 2) 90
Shirky would get confused I guess, since Philippine media at that time, kept reporting that the Philippines was the "text capital of the world" during those years and kept attributing Estrada's downfall to our text-happy countrymen.
Apart from the noise and the wasted electrons, did it result in her fall from power?
Fall from power isn't the only goal. People benefit from the transparency of government brought by additional info. Election is influenced by the amount of data the people get. What uncensored Internet brought the Philippines is that additional information—the things often omitted by news reports once Malacañang gets wind of it.
All that noise and attention brought by Social Media pushed favor away from people even slightly related to Gloria Arroyo. From the onset, her party's candidate Gibo Teodoro was really low in the ranks until he slowly distanced himself from her. Manny Villar's multi-million Peso campaign was derailed after Twitter reports came in that he received money from Gloria's side.
Aquino won this previous election more or less because of the noisy Filipinos on social networks. Well, I mean other than the death of his mother.