The Presidential Communications Operations Office is set to issue provisional accreditation to social media bloggers who have at least 5,000 followers to cover President Rodrigo Duterte during "special events."

The PCOO issued Department Order No. 015 on August 8, 2017 following the hullabaloo during the recently-concluded 50th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting where several bloggers, particularly Duterte's supporters, were given accreditation, while some of those from mainstream media failed to be accredited.

"In the interest of recognizing emerging communication platforms and harnessing the full potential of social media tools in pursuit of the PCOO’s mandate to engage the citizenry in order to enrich the quality of discourse on matters of national governance, an interim/provisional social media practitioner accreditation is established," said the DO signed by PCOO Secretary Jose Ruperto Martin Andanar.

The Order defines social media practitioner as a person that maintains a publicly-accessible social media page, blog or website, which generates content and whose principal advocacy is the regular dissemination of original news and/or opinion of interest.

The purpose of the Order is to "provide an interim system of accreditation for social media participation to cover special events attended by the President, in order to generate news and information for the citizenry through social media platforms."

The accreditation to be approved by the Social Media Office and subject to "clearance" by the Presidential Security Group, is on per event or activity only, the DO said.

The social media accreditation shall be issued a Filipino citizen who is at least 18 years of age, "with not less than 5,000 followers in any social media platform," it said.

The Social Media Office, headed by Margaux "Mocha" Uson, shall conduct a test run of this policy for a period of six months upon effectivity of the Order, subject to review or revision at the end of the period, it added. Celerina Monte/DMS