Blackouts: a word with more than 60% of negative messages on social networks, and it was also used by bots

On Wednesday, October 4, several sectors of Quito, Guayaquil, Loja, Cuenca, Cotopaxi, among others, remained without electricity, despite the fact that on Tuesday, October 3, the Minister of Energy Fernando Santos assured that there would be no cuts. He denied specific disconnections due to problems arising in the supply of energy from Colombia.

During these three days, from Tuesday to Thursday, the word blackouts was often mentioned on digital platforms. 62.08% of messages using this word were negative, 16.62% positive and 21.30% neutral, according to the Social Alert technology tool.

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There were 9,100 posts made by 4,400 users out of a total audience of 16.4 million. Of all these posts, there were 185,100 likes and 19,500 shares.

Who posted the most?

67.43% of the people who sent the most messages with the word blackouts were men, and 18.24% were women. Undefined gender is 14.34%.

The most used social network was X with 88.51%, followed by websites with 4.82%, Facebook with 3.60%, Instagram with 1.5%, TikTok with 1% and others. Mostly it was a tweet, then comments and posts.

Were bots used?

According to the Social Alert technology tool, 26.9% of posts are from bots, 30% from possible bots and 43.2% from humans. For example, one of the messages considered bots says:

“The government lied. Despite the Government’s announcement that there will be no power outages, citizens have reported power outages in different parts of the country. The suspension is unexpected and “at the request of @OperadorCenace.” Were there any power outages in your sector?”, posted the account @adricanlu, created in May 2018.

The post has ten comments, 122 retweets and 194 likes. This account has attached a meme-style image.

Meanwhile, Santos said a contract has been signed for a photovoltaic station in El Arom. It will be located where “one sees a refinery,” referring to the failed Pacific refinery. He also mentioned that there is a new Villonaco in Loja, which represents a generation of 100 mw.

The minister is sorry that these projects took so long, because, he said, when Minister René Ortiz was there, they were already awarded, but until 2022, when he returned as minister, they were still in the same status .