You might imagine internet trolls as people at home with nothing better to do. That might be true for some, but a new study titled Architects of Networked Disinformation published last week found that those leading the Philippines’ political troll army charge are actually gainfully employed advertising and PR executives.
Backed by the University of Massachusetts and the University of Leeds, Jonathan Corpus Ong and Jason Vincent A. Cabañes researched the influence of social media, troll armies, and fake news in the Philippine elections. They found that behind the seemingly organic following enjoyed by politicians like President Rodrigo Duterte is actually part of a complex operation spreading disinformation led by industry experts.
“These experts use tried-and-tested corporate branding techniques such as ‘core campaign messaging’ and ‘brand bibles,’ while exploiting ecological vulnerabilities in the unregulated industry of political marketing,” the report reads.
The chain of command the study presents is a lot like a company organizational chart.
Executives hire anonymous influencers (like those random Facebook pages that share inspirational quotes), key opinion leaders (think Mocha Uson), and fake account operators that like, share, and engage with content influencers’ posts. This creates the illusion that a political candidate has a strong following that shares his or her values.
Ong and Cabañes spoke with six executives, five anonymous influencers, and nine fake account operators and found that they all had different motivations for spreading disinformation.
While many of those hired to operate fake accounts do it for the money, advertising and PR executives on top of the chain mostly do it for the prestige.
“Chief architects aim to gain power and prestige by establishing themselves as pioneers of a new industry.”
One section of the report profiled an anonymous, award-winning creative director from one of the largest ad agencies in the country who sidelines as a political consultant. To her, what she’s doing is just a job: “This is not my soul and this is not me,” she said.
Still, she talked about how some people from her team are so good at hacking, they can “fuck your digital life without you even knowing about it,” although she said she’s mature enough to not do that.
Yet the unknowing public still has to pay the price. The Philippines was yet again ranked first in time spent on social media, but the latest Perils of Perception online survey found that Filipinos online are the third-most ignorant people in the world when it comes to global issues.
Many Filipinos get their information from Facebook because telcos offer it for free, but many only read headlines and don’t read articles, because opening links will cost them more. This makes them more susceptible to disinformation shared by influencers.
It also doesn’t help that the government has helped legitimize influencers like Uson by assigning them official government posts.
So where do we go from here? Ong and Cabañes recommend requiring ad and PR executives to disclose political consultancies, professionalizing the “influencer industry,” and requiring political candidates to disclose how much they spend on online platforms during the campaign.
