MANILA, Philippines - As of 3 pm, Thursday, August 15, there were more than 7,000 Twitter mentions of stories relating to the arrest warrant of the Napoles siblings. The mentions first spiked at round 8 pm the day before, August 14, when news first broke that a Makati court ordered the arrest of Janet Lim-Napoles and her brother Reynaldo "Jojo" Lim. The Napoleses are being accused of "serious illegal detention" of whistleblower Benhur Luy. Most of the mentions on Twitter were about the arrest...

(5th UPDATE) MANILA, Philippines – over 140,000 mentions. That's how active the August 26 movement is on social media as of 8pm. Mentions about the August 26 movement grew almost 1000% in just over 24 hours. Yesterday, August 25 11am, mentions were only at 15,000. Mentions peaked from 10am – 11am at 17,895 social media mentions, with 17,668 coming from twitter. That's almost 5 tweets per second. This is what 5 tweets per second looks like if you're monitoring on Tweetdeck. The following...

The Rappler map of the online communities behind #MillionPeopleMarch. Social Network Map by Russell Shepherd A success. The only way to describe the Philippines' first social media organized protest. As of 8pm August 26, there were more than 140,000 social media mentions about the August 26 movement, with online mentions peaking from 10am to 11am getting as many as 5 tweets per second. On the ground, police estimated 80,000 to 100,000 protesters attended the Luneta rally. A growing collective...

MANILA, Philippines – Social media is the new frontier of Disaster Risk Reduction and Response Management (DRRM) in the Philippines. Unfortunately, we're still not very good at it. Back in 2012 when Typhoon Pablo (Bopha) hit the Philippines, netizens initiated unified hashtags which the Philippine government later picked up. The Twitter account of the Official Gazette (@govph) and Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office (@PCDSPO) adopted the hashtags #RescuePH...

Halloween is dawning on us faster than we can say pumpkin spice latte. Despite having its origins rooted in lighting bonfires and putting up costumes to ward off spirits, Halloween has evolved into a festival of celebration. It is the perfect day to showcase your creativity and legitly pretend to be someone (or something) else without being judged! This year, why not get together with your friends and family for a Halloween party? Here is a handy survival guide to make your first Halloween...