MANILA, Philippines (First published on Feb. 13, 2018) — Scholars studying the fake news production and social media trolling recommended the creation of a self-regulatory commission that requires the disclosure of political consultancies as one of the measures to address the current climate of disinformation in the country.
In their study, Jonathan Corpus Ong, associate professor of communication at University of Massachusetts Amherst in the United States and Jason Cabañes, lecturer in international communication at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom argued the efforts at fact-checking and blacklisting “while well-meaning do not address the underlying causes of disinformation.”
This is because their 12-month project, funded by the British Council, found that advertising and public relations executives are the “chief architects of networked disinformation” in the Philippines. These “chief architects” work closely with digital influencers with followers ranging from 50,000 to 2,000,000 on Facebook and Twitter and community-level fake account operators to fan disinformation.
Ong and Cabañes said that making digital political campaigns more easily traceable and identifiable to corporate partners “can help members of the industry become more accountable for and respond to issues and questions about, the content and outcomes of their political campaigns.”
They also recommended to the advertising and public relations industries to develop self-regulatory standards in the digital influencer industry as “anonymity in the influencer economy enables people to elide accountability in their participation in political campaigns.”
During the second hearing into the proliferation of fake news, Sen. Manny Pacquiao said that bloggers should be licensed so they would be held accountable.
Political Campaign Transparency Act
The two scholars also urged policymakers to develop a new national campaign finance legislation to get a clear picture of what politicians spend on digital campaigning.
They noted that while politicians are required by the Commission on Elections to disclose campaign donors and their campaign spending in television and radio, they are not yet demanded to disclose campaign spending in online platforms.
Through what Ong and Cabañes call the Political Campaign Transparency Act, the public will know the full extent of campaign spending across both traditional and new media platforms.
“The public has the rights to know the quantity and quality of politicians’ television and radio advertising materials but also the viral videos, trending hashtags and Facebook advertisements they purchase,” they said.
They also encouraged civil society leaders, journalists and academics to go beyond naming and shaming known influencers and exposing anonymous influencers and bloggers.
“As our research reveals, these roots run deep entrenched in systematized labor and incentive structures that have been normalized in, and even professionalized by, the creative and digital industries,” the authors noted.
They added: “To recognize only heroes or villains in the production of fake news leaves us blind to the machine behind the madness, and thus leaves democratic discourse vulnerable to its workings.” — Graphics by RP Ocampo