MANILA: On Apr 10, Filipino social media personality Jam Magno tweeted that a rally of presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr in Tacloban the day before was attended by 300,000 people.
According to communication expert Jason Vincent Cabanes, digital disinformation has developed into “a real industry” in the Philippines. It offers jobs to content producers, whose roles vary within a hierarchy. A campaign poster of presidential candidate Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr and his running mate Sara Duterte.
The role is at the top of the network hierarchy. It involves mapping out media strategies and relaying campaign messages to others in the team. In February, it released a preliminary analysis of fact-checking carried out in relation to the May 9 polls. It found that misleading information mainly revolved around Bongbong and the vice president.
However, tsek.ph’s partner FactRakers - a fact-checking initiative by the Journalism Department at the University of the Philippines-Diliman, later proved that the image was doctored. “We're just a little entity and there's this big, enormous machine spreading disinformation. But we feel that at least, we are educating people and getting them to have that fact-checking state of mind,” she added.