GMA News is top influencer, media channel on COVID-19 issues —study

GMA News is the top influencer and media channel on social media posts about the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a study by communication campaigns and consulting company BluePrint.PH showed.

According to Cedric Castillo’s report on “24 Oras,” from March 2020 to January 2021, 80 million Facebook users in the Philippines made more than half a billion posts, comments, shares, and reactions related to COVID-19.

Of all COVID-19 posts on Facebook, GMA News’ story on President Rodrigo Duterte’s announcement on prohibiting face-to-face classes until the vaccine rollout recorded the most data points.

GMA News posts also took the top spot on so-called hotlinks.

“When we say hotlinks these are the websites that are posted on their Facebook accounts. As you can see, the highest engagement score came from GMA News,” Eero Brillantes, BluePrint.PH CEO, said.

BluePrint.PH also said that online news sites were the main source of information of Facebook users for COVID-19.

In this category, GMA News was the top media channel with more than 30 million engagement scores. — Joahna Lei Casilao/BM, GMA News