A social listening report from Capstone-Intel revealed that even though a significant number of devotees have participated in the return of Traslacion, several social media users flock to online streaming platforms to practice their faith in order to avoid massive crowds and contract COVID-19.

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Background

Quiapo Church officials resurrected the traditional Traslacion after a three-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following the suspension of Traslacion, the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene resorted to formulating other ways to celebrate the annual tradition, to which they have turned to organizing a “Walk of Faith” procession replacing Traslacion and “Pagpupugay” in place of the traditional “Pahalik” or kissing of the Black Nazarene image.

For this year, authorities have reverted the festivities intended for the Black Nazarene and decided to put the traditional Traslacion in its original form with some restrictions.

According to the Philippine National Police (PNP), over two million devotees are expected to participate in the procession. Meanwhile, official estimates from Quiapo Church Command Post as of January 9, 1:00 p.m., over 1,008,000 devotees have joined the procession.

Various security personnel from the PNP and the Philippine Coast Guard were also deployed to the vicinity of the procession in order to ensure the safety of attendees.

Methodology

Capstone-Intel Corp. examined the online presence of Traslacion in the country as a topic of discussion over the past nine days, from January 1, 2024, to January 9, 2024, by utilizing all publicly accessible posts from social and non-social media platforms in order to gather the sentiments of the public about the return of the annual tradition.

Facebook Performance

Capstone-Intel found that the observance garnered a 701,025.9 engagement score for its 2,566 total post count, which yielded over 3,426,000 total reaction count. When broken down, “Facebook love” accounts for 64.5 percent of the total reactions, with 2,208,869. Followed by “Facebook like” with 1,207,640 reactions (35.2. percent), “Facebook haha” with 4,795 (0.1 percent), “Facebook wow” with 2,144 (0.1 percent), “Facebook sad” with 1,808 (0.1 percent), and “Facebook angry” with 748 reactions. 

For the past nine days, Capstone-Intel found that the massive number of social media users, as seen in the number of “Facebook love” reactions and “Facebook like,” reveals that more Filipinos are now using the digital space to practice their faith and looking at the data, a significant number of devotees have been taking their spirituality along with the changing digital landscape and accessibility to online platforms.

It is also worth noting the number of posts for Traslacion, which means, for the past one week, there have been a lot of Filipinos rallying on social media about the celebration of the feast of the Black Nazarene. This indicates that devotees, even though the turnout of procession attendees this year is expected to be lower than the past celebrations, Nazareno followers are becoming more active online which added to the positive online presence of the celebration.

Massive online influence

Capstone-Intel likewise revealed that Traslacion alone received 96.2 percent positive mentions, and the remaining 3.8 percent were negative mentions. This means that the article mentions that the Traslacion was mostly angled positively. In a nutshell, this data only means that the posts mentioning “Traslacion” are threads with “potentially positive sentiments” among social media users.

The research agency likewise identified that “Traslacion” received 260,686,754 social media reach, while its non-social media reach yielded over 3,190,328 non-social media reach. It also produced a total of 1,899,727 social media interactions.

Countries reaching Traslacion

According to Capstone-Intel’s data, aside from the Philippines, which has reached an overall 42,423,457 Filipino online users, it has also reached audiences in several countries, including the following: 

• Syria – 3,907,887
• France – 541,096
• United States – 137,052
• India – 52,346
• Russia – 47,092
• United Kingdom – 24,312
• Canada – 15,665
• Australia – 11,637
• Ukraine – 9,352

Top posts

In terms of top posts, the top three posts for Traslacion were live streams of masses from the official Facebook Page of Quiapo Church. Particularly, the live streaming of the 5:00 AM mass, followed by its 6:00 AM mass, and 7:00 AM mass.

The consecutive hourly masses trending online can actually explain as to why some devotees resort to attending online masses instead of physically attending the celebration in order not to be burdened by the influx of devotees flocking to the Quiapo Church during the feast day.

It can also be explained that the height of COVID-19, which promoted the utilization of live streams to conduct masses, has been a successful method to engage devotees and other believers without having to be physically present inside the church.

The fear of contracting COVID-19 infection and the accessibility of online platforms both contributed to the massive online presence of Traslacion in the country.