Fact-checking gaining force in PH; what’s the next step? – study
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MANILA, Philippines — While the Philippines is seeing a more vibrant fact-checking movement to counter disinformation, its government is riding on the momentum by painting itself as a victim of “fake news,” according to a study on the spread of disinformation in the Philippines and Brazil.
In a report titled “Post-election narratives in Brazil and the Philippines,” scholars Jose Mari Lanuza, Jonathan Corpus Ong, Rafael Grohmann, Raquel Recuero, Marcelo Alves, and Camilla Tavares looked at the results of the 2022 elections in the two countries and how influence operations affected their politics.
Lanuza and Ong are both Filipino scholars from the University of the Philippines Manila and the University of Massachussetts-Amherst, while Recuero, Alves, and Tavares are Brazil-based experts studying the rise of disinformation.
Their analysis is part of the South-to-South knowledge exchange series by DigiLabour, an organization that looks at the intersections of work and digital technologies. Grohmann served as its coordinator.
The Philippines held its presidential elections in May 2022 while general elections in Brazil were held in October of the same year. The study sought to identify key lessons from both countries’ experiences with influence operations and how civil society rose to the challenge.
Among others, they noted that Brazil and the Philippines “share a preoccupation with media literacy and fact-checking initiatives that focus on monitoring and correcting social media content and individual expression.”
Better fact-checking
In the Philippines, the scholars noted, the local fact-checking movement led by academics and civil society brought more attention to content verification.
However, it said, the government “capitalized on the support for fact-checking by proposing laws that paint politicians as disinformation victims and pose potential threats to civilian freedoms,” they said.
They were referring to how congressional measures to outlaw “fake news” threaten freedom of expression and speech.
So far, at least two measures against fake news have been filed in the Senate in the 19th Congress.
Senate Bill No. 547, or the proposed Anti-Fake News Act filed by Sen. Grace Poe, seeks to amend the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees to further promote professionalism in information dissemination among public servants by ensuring that they do not become sources of misinformation.
Proactive steps in Brazil
SB 1296 filed by Sen. Jinggoy Estrada seeks to criminalize the creation and dissemination of fake news by amending the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012. A similar measure, House Bill No. 2971, was filed at the House of Representatives.
Meanwhile, there is still a lack of accountability measures against social media platforms and actors in the disinformation-for-hire industry, the report added.
It also observed “more individualistic and scattered brigading and canceling efforts” against purveyors of fake news in the Philippines, in contrast to Brazil’s more “united and concerted efforts by multisectoral groups.”
For example, Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court maintains an Observatory of Transparency in Elections that ordered the removal of disinformative content and demonetized videos that appeared to be propaganda for its former president, Jair Bolsonaro.
One of the first measures taken by its new president, Lula da Silva, was to create a secretariat on digital policies to address disinformation.
Both countries, however, still “fall short in pushing for systemic-level interventions that look at the political economy of influence operations.”
Better participation
But while the 2022 electoral outcomes for both Brazil and the Philippines highlighted the growing political divide in these countries, the scholars were optimistic about the growing presence of democratic networks pushing back against disinformation.
“While polarized, increased political efficacy indicates heightened political participation and offers pathways to more inclusive and deliberative practices for elections and policies,” they noted.
