Now, the social media and traditional media Marcos-related stories mentioned here are only a small portion of the very long list of contents that are available to Filipinos. But with this small portion, it can be seen how frightening it could be not just for online Filipinos who rely on social media as a source of information about the Marcos narratives but also for the whole country especially as the election is fast approaching. With the fast growing number of social media misleading contents, serious concerns for pro-democracy stakeholders are now raised together with the wary of the heightened potential for mis- and disinformation on social media. Those discussed here which are cases of either: (a) false or inaccurate materials are shared unknowingly and with no particular intent to mislead (misinformation) but still misleads concerned Filipinos or (b) the purposeful dissemination of false, misleading or biased information, manipulated narratives and propaganda (disinformation) continue to rise causing the said concerns and wary.

 

These social media-borne misinformation and disinformation threatens to sow further division in Philippine society and politics making the upcoming elections to be a tough fight. Injecting these can be easily done “subtly” or “covertly” by politicians, their campaigns, and their supporters. Given the role of social media in influencing the Philippines, back in 2018, Katie Harbatch, a Facebook executive, even called the country “patient zero” in a fake news pandemic or “infodemic”.

 

Luz Rimban, the executive director of the Asian Center for Journalism (ACFJ) at the Ateneo de Manila University also acknowledged that because there are no gatekeepers on social media, it has become more difficult for citizens to distinguish between true and false information. Starting from late August 2021 to late September of the same year,  the Ateneo Policy Center in Manila partnered with educational institutions, organisations, and student governments from universities and colleges in the country’s top 25 vote-rich cities and in the country’s capital and launched a five-minute quiz identifying possible fake news examples. Here, from around 24,625 young Filipinos, it was found out that the ability to spot fake news of most of the participants is below the pass rate, which is typically 75% in the Philippines.

 

Indeed, as social media is now a platform that most politicians like the Marcos family resort to for their campaigns due to pandemic-related restrictions, more than the issue on the great social media army of the Marcoses, the issue on too much reliance of Filipinos on various social media as a source of facts is also worth the attention.

 

As they say, traditional media, just like any other forms of media, can be biased. Even campus press do acknowledge this. College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP) goes with a dictum that goes: “To write is already to choose.” And other groups of journalists believe likewise. This way, bias as journalists do not entail rebuking the truth for personal interests. Rather, the dictum means (a) choosing to uphold and protect democratic interests, (b) choosing to be revolutionary despite the widespread deciety, roguery, cronyism corruption and state-perpetrated violence, (c) choosing to search for truth under the heaps of lies spread by those in power, (d) choosing to expose the ills of the society, (e) and choosing to be a bastion of truth and a militant vanguard to combat divisive and deceitful state propaganda and to rouse the Filipino people into greater resistance against tyranny. Such views of media, however, triggers the distrust of Filipinos for traditional media as they are misinformed that these sorts of media are not allowed to talk or write in a way that they claim some information to be fake. Filipinos tend to take these acts of traditional media as the bad sort of bias as they seem to personally judge information whether they are fake or true for them. Filipinos were taught that news articles of ABS-CBN, Philippine Daily Inquirer and the like should merely state information as is, without fact-checking them.

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Moreover, we are in the post-truth era wherein stating merely facts are less influential and less appealing to the public compared to emotional or personal beliefs. We are in the point of time when what prevails is the emo-truth, which basically describes what drives the excessive reliance of Filipinos to social media in knowing the Marcoses, or even in collecting information about other concerns. With emo-truth, people tend to depend on emotion thus, vloggers or social media users who present information about the Marcoses in a more emotionally-appealing way greatly influence these Filipinos who depend on social media on discovering the truth, they tend to attract these Filipinos to keep using social media in knowing more and more or rather, in looking for other parts of the tale or narrative. Such  social media contents include the ones showcased in this websites, which are contents that are commonly presented as “hidden part of history” or “shocking truth”.

 

Nonetheless, if one is doubtful of fully resorting to traditional media in place of social media as a source of Marcos-related information, the comparisons exhibited here should at least suggest Filipinos to check both and start doing the same - comparing sources and their contents. Doing so would greatly increase the chances of finding which one contains fallacy. And by comparing, it is not merely reading to see which one is longer and contains more ideas or information or merely watching to see which speaker seems to be more sincere about his claims. Rather, comparing also entails analyzing the sources cited in both sources as these can be not reliable as well as the supplementary videos or pictures attached as these might be edited and manipulated. And as what was done here, it could also be helpful to extend the efforts to checking other sources apart from these two sorts of media, understanding that Filipinos may be distrustful of them. Other sources could include independent fact-checking organizations, court rulings, government journals, international databases, etc. as this can appear less biased about the Marcoses or the Aquinos or even the whole Philippines.