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The next election in the Philippines is scheduled for May 2025 and won't even involve the often fiercely contested positions of president and vice president. But the interval between elections so far remains fraught with disinformation, which has plagued the Philippine political landscape and exacerbated the polarization of society.
Referred to as "patient zero" and the "petri dish" in the global disinformation epidemic,1 the Philippines persistently serves as a prime example of a country where government, politicians and their allies employ disinformation both online and offline to manipulate public opinion, suppress critics, advance controversial policies and consolidate power.
Truth under Siege
The Philippines caught global attention in 2016 when the elderly Rodrigo Duterte, a longtime local politico with a minimal national political base at the time, successfully deployed a highly coordinated army of mostly paid "keyboard warriors" on social media. This strategy amplified his populist appeal and undermined his rivals during his presidential run.
The disinformation machinery would stay intact throughout his six-year presidency, helping him justify his brutal war on drugs, vitriolic attacks on the media and opponents, unequivocal defence of the late Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and his authoritarian rule, and contentious "pivot" away from the United States towards China, among others.
The 2019 midterm election serves as a further reminder of the Duterte camp's effective social media playbook. A vicious volley of false or misleading narratives primarily targeted the eight-member senatorial slate of the opposition coalition Otso Diretso. All of its candidates-even Manuel Roxas II and Paolo Benigno Aquino IV, who had the biggest chances of winning according to pre-election surveys-lost their bids. Conversely, nine bets of the administration electoral alliance Hugpong ng Pagbabago, managed by Duterte's daughter Sara, made it. They included Marcos's eldest daughter, Imee, whom Duterte previously admitted helped bankroll his 2016 campaign.2
Electoral disinformation reached a new level of sophistication in the 2022 poll, which saw a rematch between Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the late dictator's son and namesake, and Leni Robredo, to whom he lost the 2016 vice presidential race.
Months of a relentless barrage of disinformation, disseminated across multiple formats and platforms and unprecedented in the country's history, approximated what the US-based think tank Rand Corp. describes as the "firehose of falsehood" strategy: high-volume and multichannel; rapid, continuous...