Analysis: Disinformation a Huge Problem in the Philippines

TaiwanPlus News

As former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte is set to appear before the International Criminal Court in The Hague on Friday for crimes against humanity, fake news about his arrest and trial spreads like wildfire across the Philippines. TaiwanPlus spoke to Celine Samson from Vera Files, a Manila-based non-profit news and fact-checking organization, about disinformation in the Philippines.

Transcript

00:00We've seen a lot of fake news circulating online, particularly in relation to Duterte's

00:06recent arrest. What form does this misinformation take in the Philippines and what channels

00:11are being abused?

00:13There are a lot of forms that the disinformation surrounding Duterte's arrest have taken.

00:18I mean, every single day since then, we have received tips from Filipinos on posts from

00:24social media that they want us to fact check. So a lot of them are text posts. We have also

00:30seen a number of videos that have been taken out of context. Yeah, so and a lot of fake

00:38quote cards as well that that is a staple in disinformation in the Philippines. It's

00:45an easy hundreds of thousands of Filipinos that the disinformation pieces or campaigns

00:51are reaching.

00:53And do we know if these misinformation campaigns are centralized or organized? Where are they

00:58coming from?

00:59I'm not so sure yet about how organized it is. I mean, I would say that there is probably

01:04some bit of organization there. Some of the claims have come from YouTube channels that

01:11we have fact checked in the past. And oftentimes, I mean, there are studies that prove that

01:16in the Philippines, disinformation is a business. But then there are also a lot of claims that,

01:22you know, appear to be have been shared or published by regular Filipinos. There have

01:27been some that have been that have come from elsewhere. I would say we still have to do

01:34a bit of digging to see if there there has been some foreign interference there.

01:39A recent survey from Social Weather Station reports that almost 60% of Filipinos surveyed

01:45recognize that misinformation was a problem on the internet. Is that an encouraging figure?

01:51And are people becoming more media literate?

01:53A lot of people now use the term fact checking and also fake news or misinformation, disinformation.

02:00So there is awareness, but how confident they are in detecting disinformation, misinformation,

02:09that's where the problem is. It's such a huge problem in the Philippines, like it affects

02:14whether or not people take vaccines or who they vote for in the elections. When it comes

02:19to media literacy, you don't immediately see the results, I would say. It takes quite

02:27some time for you to see if there's behavior change. But at least you equip students, you

02:33equip teachers with the skills to identify misinformation and disinformation, to think

02:41more critically about what they see online.

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