Napoles arrest story spikes on social media

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 warrant, the circumstances of the Napoles siblings’ arrest, and even conspiracy theories about where they might flee.

The most active accounts during the spike were those of news organizations and online celebrities reacting to the news.  These word clouds are created with Radian6, an online monitoring tool for various social network platforms.

At around 12 noon Thursday, August 15, a 3rd spike occurred as authorities started gathering information online about the whereabouts of the Napoles siblings. A lot of NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) hotline mentions and fugitive hunt keywords surfaced during this time. Mentions remained high until 3pm.

The most active accounts were still media organizations, although some accounts of government agencies involved in the hunt, such as the Department of Justice (DOJ), became active as well.

Around 3pm, Rappler’s Natashya Guttierez got a lot of mentions when she tweeted that the DOJ released the list of 30 vehicles that belong to Napoles.

Here are some of the other most followed tweets during the 4th spike at 3pm.

– Rappler.com

Related stories:

• ‘If you were Mrs Napoles, would you surrender?’ — Kapunan
• Surrender, NBI tells Napoles siblings
• Where did Napoles detain Benhur Luy?
• Napoles, Revilla sons are business partners
• De Lima, Kapunan: Ex-law partners on opposite sides of ‘scam’