“New technologies should be a tool for emancipation, not for manipulation,” said Vera Jourová, vice president of Values and Transparency, as quoted from the European Union press release on the proposal for Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising, 25 November 2021.
A strong statement that must be a guide for all parties in regulating social media policies because the ongoing digital transition makes internet use increasingly unavoidable. The digital world, as well as social media which has become the largest public space, must ensure that everyone is safe in their activities, and has the right to information on paid political content and credible information.
The last three words of the paragraph above: the credible information, the more at stake. In the participation theory developed by CHOICE, for example, information is the key to the meaningful participation. Information does not stand alone. It is a product of an ecosystem, namely an information ecosystem that involves actors who produce information, channels through which information is published and disseminated, actors who disseminate information, fact check organizations, and consumers of information. There is no disinformation without actors producing, spreading, and suitable place to live.
After the Philippine Election 9 May 2022, how to win on digital platforms used by the Philippine political actors will be a lesson. Is it true that disinformation, misinformation, and targeted political advertisements are effective strategies to win elections in the era of information disruption?
Disinformation Trends in the Philippine Election
When I conducted election observation in the Philippines, all the election actors I interviewed, including the campaign teams, legislative candidates, election organizers, election observers and voters (except for senior voter in indigenous community and farmers who live in the mountain have difficulty accessing the internet), even media practitioners and academics say that disinformation is very rampant. Facebook has always been referred to as a medium for various disinformation that attacks election participants, the Commission of Election (Comelec), as well as election processes and technicalities.
In this phenomenon, fact-checking organizations are often the target of attacks in every debunk post. Foreign stooge, CIA agent (United States intelligence agency), traitor to the nation are three of many accusations and slander against fact-checking organizations such as Rappler and Vera Files. This includes the judgement of partiality to one of the candidates, or hatred of one of the candidates. Fact-checking organizations, like election organizers, have fallen victim to the tug-of-war due to the polarization of the two presidential candidates, even though the Philippines has ten candidates. The competition of eight other candidates helped reduce the polarization of the Philippine election so that it was not as severe as the polarization of the two candidates in the Indonesian election.
Regarding trends that can be analyzed from the Philippine election disinformation phenomenon, Vera Files, a fact-checking organization that is a partner of Meta, found three patterns. First, that disinformation benefits certain candidates and harms certain candidates. Bong Bong Marcos (BBM) became the political actor who benefited the most from circulating disinformation, while another candidate, Leni Robredo, became the most targeted actor. 52 of the 336 disinformation that went viral from January 1 to December 10, 2021, 52 disinformation promoted BBM.
Second, videos published on Youtube many become a source of disinformation that is spread to other social media platforms. From January 1 to December 10, 2021, nearly a third (89) of the 336 articles on online disinformation published by Vera Files were related to YouTube videos. This number is a significant increase from 2018, 2019, and 2020.
There are two Youtube channels that produce the most disinformation content, namely Showbiz Fanaticz and BANAT NEWS TV. Showbiz Fanaticz is a verified YouTube channel as an official channel created on November 9, 2017. Youtube has not revoked the verified label even though Showbiz Fanaticz has been reported many times by many fact checkers. The YouTube platform also allows for various misleading tactics. The most common use of false or clickbait titles, with video content that is not supported by factual evidence.
Unfortunately, videos containing disinformation on Youtube are amplified in a very coordinated way through social media and other platforms, such as Facebook, websites, and even Tiktok. Vera Files managed to map accounts and pages that coordinate the spread of disinformation from Youtube to various platforms. This amplification gives Youtube video greater exposure. For example, the disinformation video of the Supreme Court's decision on the BBM disqualification petition was viewed 897 thousand times on Facebook. Meanwhile, videos posted on Youtube have only been viewed 237 thousand times.
Third, satirical content is increasingly being used to spread disinformation. Its main targets are government officials and political actors. Satirical content creators make fun of their subjects based on issues or events related to government officials or political actors. The trouble is, most internet users can't identify the difference between satire and news report or credible information.
The forms of disinformation in Philippine elections
I collected and analyzed the fact-checking results of Vera Files and Rappler, two credible fact-checking organizations that are official partners of Meta and/or Twitter. Rappler even has a special fact-checking partnership with Comelec.
As a result, the forms of election disinformation in the Philippines are the same as the disinformation circulating in the 2019 Indonesian Elections and the 2020 Simultaneous Regional Head Elections. I found various forms of disinformation related to the technical and electoral processes, disinformation that attacked Comelec members and institution, and disinformation about supporting candidates. Some disinformation contain voter suppression, also accompanied by intimidating narratives. The difference is, if in Indonesia there is disinformation with narratives of intimidating and questioning the voting rights of marginal and vulnerable groups, in the Philippines, I found disinformation accompanied by narratives of intimidation against progressive leftist election participants or known as red tagging.
I would like to highlight three examples of disinformation that could potentially deprive the voting rights in the Philippines. First, disinformation that directs voters not to vote for partylist because the vote on the party list (at the back of the ballot) will penetrate to the front page so that it will interfere with the results of the vote counting machine reading the voter's choice in the presidential election and other elections.
Comelec denied the disinformation by informing that the circles on the front and back pages of the ballot did not coincide. And, even if the shadow on one side of the ballot is visible on the other, it will not affect the reading of the vote counting machine.
There is also similar disinformation that informs voters how to cast the wrong vote. The correct one is to blacken a full circle on the circle. However, information is spread with various versions that choosing the right one is to put a cross or just blacken the half circle.
Several voters also told me there were rumors that blackening the circle beyond the circle would invalidate the ballot. Regarding this, I received different answers from the Comelec commissioner at the provincial level and election officials at the district/city level. Albay Province Comelec Commissioner, Atty. Calixto L. Aquino Jr. said it was true that blackening beyond the circle would invalidate the ballot, as doing so would be read by the counting machine as “marking the ballot”, one of which would invalidate the ballot. However, an official at the Comelec office in Legazpi City said blackening beyond the circle would not invalidate the voter's ballot. A sign that can invalidate the validity of a ballot is a random sign outside the ballot circle, such as writing your name or scribbling on the ballot.
In Indonesia's experience, the different understandings of election administrators regarding a rule set by the central Comelec have indeed made the problem of disinformation even more complicated. Unfortunately, I found no debunk results against this example of disinformation.
The second disinformation that I want to highlight is the mandatory vaccination as a condition for voting. Worse yet, one of the media agencies, News5, became a disseminator of misinformation. News5 reporters told the public that at polling stations, voters had to show a vaccination card or bring a negative RT-PCR test result to vote. In fact, there is no such obligation. This disinformation spread across Facebook and Tiktok.
Another issue that often arises in disinformation in the Philippines election is the result of the vote count.
Get ready, Indonesia!
Many important things are prepared by Indonesia because political battles are now happening more in the digital realm. First, establishing a multi-stakeholder forum for handling disinformation consisting of KPU, Bawaslu, relevant ministries/state institutions, social media platforms, media, fact-checking organizations, and civil society. This forum will be a retainer who carries out various activities, such as conducting prebunking or mapping issues that may arise in disinformation, election literacy, mapping of Youtube channels, social media accounts, pages, and websites that often post political disinformation content, content moderation, and debunking or revealing lies.
Monitoring websites or accounts that support big media names or unregistered media is also important. In the case of the Philippines, for example, disinformation is also produced and spread by the Cebu Dairy News Facebook page, a play on the digital news portal Cebu Daily News (CDN).
An important multi-stakeholder scheme is implemented to better ensure the content moderation process by social media platforms that is more accountable and democratic, encourages the effectiveness of reporting disinformation and misinformation through one-stop reporting channels, strengthens the Bawaslu KPU in responding quickly to disinformation, enables coordination between platforms to reduce the spread of disinformation across platforms, and ensure that election information and debunking results are widely amplified to the public.
Second, strengthening the election organizers, media, and civil society at the local level to monitor disifnormation, report disinformation, and respond quickly in the Pilkada (Regional Head Elections). Pilkada have a local context that stakeholders at the local level are familiar with.
Training on identifying disinformation narratives, how to report disinformation, as well as how to use tools such as CrowdTangle and Buzzsumo to track disinformation and examine the actions taken by the platform can be provided. []
This article is translated by Catherine Natalia.
Third, strengthen the KPU and Bawaslu regulations to tighten the platform's responsibility for disinformation circulating on social media. The European Union, for example, together with social media platforms in Europe, has made Code of Practice on Disinformation of 2022 which enlarges the role of platforms in reducing the spread of disinformation, promotes transparency of political advertising, and mandates platforms to provide their public data access to researchers.
The European Union has also drafted the Digital Services Act to encourage online platform accountability for illegal and harmful content. This law provides better protection for internet users and the basic rights of users.
The sooner it is prepared, the better. The election stage has started since June. The election breakdown due to information manipulation should not happen.
