Author Topic: Why, how is Duterte winning the information war?  (Read 1264 times)

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Why, how is Duterte winning the information war?
« on: March 06, 2018, 12:57:03 PM »

Why, how is Duterte winning the information war?

By Karol Ilagan



HE LASHES OUT at reporters and calls the false and misleading information that he dishes out as jokes or “traps.” Yet while his diatribes can be described as unbecoming of his office, President Rodrigo R. Duterte remains widely popular, enjoying consistently high trust ratings in surveys.

But public-relations practitioner Ron Jabal says that to understand why Duterte is winning the so-called information war requires going beyond the soundbites and personalities and looking into the motives and interests of both the source and interpreter of the message.

Speaking at a panel in the Democracy and Disinformation conference last week, Jabal said that journalists need to look at Duterte’s public appearances as a ritual or a performance. Duterte is not just a disseminator of information, he said, but a source of drama. This, according to Jabal, is how the President’s supporters interpret his message – that he is performing, not just providing information.

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Re: Why, how is Duterte winning the information war?
« Reply #1 on: March 06, 2018, 12:58:55 PM »



Organized by news organizations and universities, the two-day event held at the Ateneo de Manila University in Makati gathered over 40 media experts to discuss why “fake news” and other forms of disinformation threaten freedoms, and how people can fight back.

Jabal said that while shedding light on the truth through reporting and fact-checking is of course essential, the campaign that needed to be done is not only about communication but also behavioral in nature.

“Fake news, misinformation, disinformation, or even ‘malinformation’ could be a strategy,” he said. “So we need to look at it from that way.”

When viewed from a PR lens, Jabal said, what is happening indicates that disinformation might be part of a strategy because of a structure that seems to be followed. He said that this is why the media and other institutions need to look at the issue with the elements of a campaign in mind to understand why there has been so much support for Duterte.

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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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Re: Why, how is Duterte winning the information war?
« Reply #2 on: March 06, 2018, 01:00:40 PM »



Check out Jonathan Corpus Ong and Jason Vincent O. Cabañes’ study titled “Architects of Networked Disinformation: Behind the Scenes of Troll Accounts and Fake News Production in the Philippines,” which found that disinformation production is a professionalized enterprise in the country.

“We need to look at the source or the agent – who are speaking, who are producing this content,” Jabal said. “We need to be able look at it from the point of view of the message itself – how is the message being crafted?”

These need to be addressed because the messages and the images being developed use shared belief as a base. This goes back to Jabal’s point that understanding Duterte’s supporters – who they are and how they are interpreting his messages — is an important part of the equation as well.

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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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Re: Why, how is Duterte winning the information war?
« Reply #3 on: March 06, 2018, 01:05:19 PM »



Jabal noted that Duterte’s supporters, when they post or share information online, could be performing as well just like the president. This rests on his observation that every time people publish something on Facebook, they almost instantaneously check whether their friends are liking or sharing it. The tendency is to share because the idea is people believe in that information.

“We’re performing also for our followers, for those people who like us,” he said.

This could be a reason why the supposed strategy is winning because the information given is packaged and repackaged in a manner that appeals to the base of the base, Jabal said.

Hong Kong Baptist University journalism professor Cherian George, another speaker at the conference, meanwhile put forth another perspective. To be sure, the media being able reach out to the audience using the right communication tools and social media skills is important. But George said that this is not enough because the truth, in the current context, is a much harder sell than the lie.

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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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Re: Why, how is Duterte winning the information war?
« Reply #4 on: March 06, 2018, 01:07:26 PM »



“The truth is if you’re looking at the economic problems of any country, there are simply no easy answers,” he said. “How do you go out and tell the people, ‘Well, the truth is, looking at the state of the world, of our country, it is in fact not possible for any politician to guarantee you a job or a high salary’.”

The fact that sacrifices need to be made in order to ensure some basic decent living is a hard sell. Making empty promises, like how politicians do, meanwhile, is much easier to do.

For instance, with human rights, the easy sell is to tell people that they are first and foremost Filipino, Muslim, or Hindu, and that other people do not count, George said. In short, asking people to look at themselves in terms of their most obvious and salient identity is easy. It is harder to ask people to consider the obligation they owe to strangers simply because they are members of the human race.

The problem requires deep civic education, which is more than a job for the media. The solution cannot be captured in a clever tweet or soundbite.

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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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Re: Why, how is Duterte winning the information war?
« Reply #5 on: March 06, 2018, 01:13:57 PM »



George pointed out that this is why demagogues like Donald Trump go for the easy sell — not because they are ideologically attached to white nationalism for example, but because these are effective, easy political stances.

“If it was easy to promote democracy and human rights, Donald Trump would be doing, championing that,” he said. “He is not, because it is a hard sell.”

The often easy answer, George noted, is to blame it on the people “because it lets us off the hook.” The more challenging question is how the system let down people so badly that they are willing to overturn norms and rebel against expertise. This is a much harder question because media, academe, and other institutions across society end up pointing fingers at each other.

“We have failed the people over a long time such that they are willing to opt for easy but wrong answers.” George said.

Jabal, though, said that reporters can do more in presenting facts and data by using real-life experiences and doing more investigative reporting in the mainstream. Beyond content itself, the PR practitioner also emphasized the need to study how information is distributed. He finds a problem with Facebook giving users just one side of the story, as an effect of echo chambers and filter bubbles.

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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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Re: Why, how is Duterte winning the information war?
« Reply #6 on: March 06, 2018, 01:16:58 PM »



Social networking service Facebook uses an algorithm that provides content to users that it deems the user wants. This is based on user activity, when he or she engages with like-minded friends or screens out content that does not conform with his or her existing preferences. The result is a virtual bubble that reinforces the user’s biases, insulating him or her from opposing viewpoints.

George, however, sees a problem in looking at filter bubbles from the lens of social media seen as a new form of media. He said that the media must also look at it as a new form of conversation or social interaction. In truth, he said, people tend to interact socially with people they like, and with whom they share the same values.

“We don’t then think about what society should do to penetrate our conversations or gate-crash our party,” he said. “In a crowded, in a very intrusive environment, we have the power retreat into our spaces where we get to chat with people we care about, people we share our values, our religion.”

George said that while this reality offline is not alarming or wrong, it turns out to be a dilemma online. Rather than seeing it as a problem on Facebook, however, George said that journalists must ask whether they are doing enough to create media experiences where people get to confront other points of view. — PCIJ, February 2018

http://pcij.org/


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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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Re: Why, how is Duterte winning the information war?
« Reply #7 on: March 06, 2018, 01:26:12 PM »

Fake news production and social media 'trolls'

February 13, 2018
University of Leeds


Credit: University of Leeds

A network of digital workers are designing political disinformation campaigns, creating fake news and fanning the flames of public discontent in the Philippines, new research has found.

The research outlines the motivations and strategies of a well organised and funded hierarchy of political operators, who maintain day jobs as advertising and public relations executives, computer programmers and political administrative staff.

The report, Architects of Networked Disinformation: Behind the Scenes of Troll Accounts and Fake News Production in the Philippines, is based on a year-long research project.

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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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Re: Why, how is Duterte winning the information war?
« Reply #8 on: March 06, 2018, 01:28:24 PM »

Led by Dr. Jason Cabañes from the School of Media and Communication and Dr. Jonathan Corpus Ong from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the project involved in-depth interviews with disinformation architects and online observation of the fake accounts they operated.

"We were initially curious about the kind of people who become 'paid trolls' and how they manage to live with that stigma," said Dr. Ong. "Meeting the people behind fake Facebook accounts, we learned that there is actually a professionalised hierarchy with ad and PR strategists at the top."

Dr. Cabañes, a lecturer in International Communication, added: "We also met the anonymous digital influencers and fake account operators in the middle and lower rungs of the hierarchy. We got to know how financial insecurity and career aspirations drove many of them to get into disinformation work."

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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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Re: Why, how is Duterte winning the information war?
« Reply #9 on: March 06, 2018, 01:29:19 PM »

Disinformation campaigns

The study explains how strategists set campaign objectives based on input from their political clients, then delegate political marketing responsibility to a team of digital influencers and fake account operators.

These operators infiltrate online communities, artificially trend hashtags to hijack mainstream media attention, and disseminate disinformation to silence enemies and seed revisionist history narratives.

While the Philippine public's moral panic about fake news is often directed at high-profile digital influencers and celebrities who are seen to incite political divisiveness and harass journalists, Dr. Ong and Dr. Cabañes argue the architects of disinformation are hiding in plain sight – wearing respectable faces as leaders in their industry while sidestepping accountability.

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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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Re: Why, how is Duterte winning the information war?
« Reply #10 on: March 06, 2018, 01:29:54 PM »

"Our aim is not to name and shame individual workers, but to expose the system that has professionalised the organisational workflow and salary incentive schemes of 'paid trolls' and fake news authors," Dr. Ong added.

Election funding legislation and gaps in self-regulation of the advertising and PR industries allow digital campaigns to remain unchecked, and for PR and ad executives to take on ethically dubious freelance work without fear of being held accountable, the researchers say.

Dr. Cabañes said: "There's no one-size-fits-all solution to disinformation. Countries need to understand the hierarchies and financial incentives that reward these 'paid trolls'.

"Simply blocking accounts or blacklisting fake news sites – while often well-meaning – does not treat the underlying causes of the problem."

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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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Re: Why, how is Duterte winning the information war?
« Reply #11 on: March 06, 2018, 01:31:01 PM »

Call for action

The report proposes policy-driven solutions to industry, government and civil stakeholders and calls for new collective interventions to the systematic production of disinformation.

These recommendations include self-regulation measures in the digital influencer industry and legal reforms for election finance transparency.

Drawing attention to the country's highly skilled, highly organised online freelance labour force – described as "a stockpile of digital weapons" – the research challenges global actors to look beyond the West and consider how fake news production in countries such as the Philippines, currently the outsourcing capital of the world and previously the focus of attention for "digital sweatshops", might have far-reaching implications for digital disinformation in democratic countries such as the UK and US, and vice versa.

Explore further: 'Fake news' becomes a business model: researchers

More information: The report is available online: newtontechfordev.com/newton-te … cial-media-trolling/
Provided by: University of Leeds


https://phys.org/news/

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Re: Why, how is Duterte winning the information war?
« Reply #12 on: March 06, 2018, 01:33:32 PM »

Call for action

The report proposes policy-driven solutions to industry, government and civil stakeholders and calls for new collective interventions to the systematic production of disinformation.

These recommendations include self-regulation measures in the digital influencer industry and legal reforms for election finance transparency.

Drawing attention to the country's highly skilled, highly organised online freelance labour force – described as "a stockpile of digital weapons" – the research challenges global actors to look beyond the West and consider how fake news production in countries such as the Philippines, currently the outsourcing capital of the world and previously the focus of attention for "digital sweatshops", might have far-reaching implications for digital disinformation in democratic countries such as the UK and US, and vice versa.

oops. :(

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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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