OBILL, EMERSON P_TERM_PAPER_STS

Social Media in Election 2022: The Rise of Disinformation and Polarization in the Philippines Emerson P. Obillo Leyte Normal University, Tacloban City [email protected] With the 2022 national election on the horizon, social media is a powerful tool to reach a wider and bigger audience for the candidates given that the threat of Covid-19 is still present in the country. More than ever, social media platforms have been beneficial this time due to their convenience and accessibility to the masses. Reading content, watching videos, sharing of information, and exchanges of comments have been available venues on these platforms. However, the accessibility of social media, according to Quitzon (2021), makes it a prime platform for swaying public opinion. In this manner, the growing concern on disinformation and the widespread polarization among Filipinos, voters and non-voters, has been alarmingly observed in these digital spaces. To date, over 90 percent of Filipinos with access to the internet, as reported by Tapsell (2020), are on social media. Facebook and YouTube dominate the country. As of 2021, about 81 percent of the Philippine population is on Facebook. Meanwhile, 85 percent of Filipinos with access to the internet watch YouTube. The average Filipino internet user spent nearly four hours on social media every day (Statista Research Department, 2021). These numbers only show how digitally connected the Filipinos are in terms of social media use, and how they trust these platforms compared to the mainstream media. In fact, a 2017 survey found that Filipinos with internet access trust social media more than mainstream media—87 percent of these respondents

claimed to trust information found on social media. But with unreliable internet coverage and the rest of the web effectively paywalled, it is very difficult for Filipinos to fact-check what they see on their Facebook feed or in Messenger, WhatsApp, and Viber chats, even if they want to (Statista Research Department, 2021). Given such number of users in the country, it is possible that disinformation would flourish and ramped up on a sizeable scale. Truth be told, Occeńola (2019) revealed that the Philippines was even been called a petri dish for disinformation, wherein groups experimented with manipulating voter opinion or disseminating propaganda on social media in the Philippines before using the techniques in the West. President Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign, for instance, was the first to tap into social media virality in the Philippines. Under the instruction of his social media manager, Nic Gabunada, Duterte’s campaign employed an army of internet trolls tasked to “amplify” his message throughout Philippine cyberspace. After Duterte's social media campaign's unexpected success, disinformation has become even more entrenched in Philippine society. In the light of the coming 2022 elections, the spread of disinformation online has been more rampant and far worse. Political operators are spending a lot of money to finance these keyboard warriors or troll army whose job is to merely spread inflammatory posts laced with lies to gain traction and incite hate to other people on the platform. Trolls, according to Mahtani and Cabato (2019) are now endemic to Philippine cyberspace: companies, celebrities, and politicians alike employ trolls to smear opponents or create the appearance of a fervent fanbase. They are frequently hired by politicians to fight on their behalf. Often, they create a veneer of support through seemingly organic tweets by “real” people. But oftentimes, these trolls are not even real and are just bot-operated (Lopez, 2020).

Alongside the enormous challenge on disinformation comes the concern on the massive polarization during elections. For Tucker et al. (2018), intense polarization creates an environment that is highly charged with political misinformation as both parties utilize extreme tactics to breed incivility and pollute public discourse. Previous studies in the United States have shown that political polarization plays a critical role in the spread of “fake news” and the proliferation of disinformation (Chua, 2022). This result only shows how polluted discourses doubled the propagation of false news and unvetted information in our information ecosystem. In fact, empirical studies have already revealed the extent of polarization in social media. On Twitter, Conover et al. (2011) and Barbera et al. (2015) found that there is clustering in the retweet patterns of users along ideological divides. Users are more likely to share information that aligns with their predisposed political leanings. However, these are mostly limited to political issues (Barbera et al. 2015). In the context of the Philippines, under the Duterte administration, political discussions have become polarized and highly emotional. This, along with the shift to online modes of discussions as well as the upcoming Philippine presidential elections, leads to an information environment that is vulnerable to echo chambers and fake news (Deinla, 2020). This is vouched by Tapsell (2019) as he acknowledged the creation of a new media ecosystem led by pro-Duterte social media bloggers that seek to undermine the credibility of mainstream media. As the leaders of public opinion shift from traditional media to internet-based personalities, the Duterte regime has also ushered in an era of post-truth politics in the country. In the light of the upcoming 2020 elections, the increased polarization has been well documented to reveal how divided Filipinos have been this election season. In a study conducted by Chua (2022), the results divulged that the analysis of the behaviors of almost 130,000 accounts

engaged in Philippine election-related conversations highlights polarization between supporters of two presidential candidates – Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Leni Robredo. It is found that each faction varies in both number and behavior. In terms of tweeting about negative topics, those that tweet mostly about Ferdinand Marcos Jr. tend to exhibit more negativity. Accounts that tweet about Leni Robredo mostly tend to quote and be quoted almost exclusively by others like them about the same topics. Moreover, for accounts that tweet about Ferdinand Marcos Jr., however, interactions can be broken down mainly into two – interaction with other accounts within their network and interaction that involves quoting from accounts that tweet almost only negatively about Leni Robredo. These results disclose the gravity of disinformation being shared to intentionally incite hatred and provoke negative comments against another party—Leni Robredo for that matter. The immense sharing of false information, fake news, and unvetted data trigger the increase in polarization in the Philippines. Having had to engage in these political discourses, Filipinos have been more and more polarized; thereby, becoming a potential target in this political divide. The presence of social media this 2022 national and local elections has been the main driver of political campaigns for most of the candidates. However, the provision of social media has also been the outlet of enormous dispositions of disinformation among users. Moreover, the spread of disinformation through social media threatens to further divide Philippine society and politics. Hence, a move to fight this rampancy must be addressed accordingly. As Quitzon (2021) puts it, the right balance of outrage, virality, misinformation, and trolling might be enough to tip the scales in any candidate’s favor as only a bare plurality is required to win the presidency. The stakes for this election are high: Philippine voters will decide if the country weakens or strengthens its democratic institutions.

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