Jonathan Corpus Ong
@jonathan_c_ong
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https://t.co/tNnZ164IRn Inaugural Director. @UMass Professor of Global Digital Media. #CarnegieFellows and also #OracleOng 🔮
Joined April 2010
What can South-to-South knowledge exchange contribute to Tech and Democracy research? What are divergence points between Global North & South tech justice advocacies? How are so-called global “whole-of-society” coalitions extractive of “local partners”? New study @GloTechLab 1/6
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Made it into the meme wars and i hate it here 😂
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“Trolls have very fancy titles. They are PR associates, marketing strategists, social media community managers. For me that is interesting—no one is formally a troll.” Cool portrait of my #CarnegieFellows award by @ABSCBNNews @rhiagrana 🙏❤️
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A Thread on the Marcoses’ False Victimhood Performance on the anniversary of the martial law declaration #NeverForget 1/11.
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Mahirap sa Pinoy instead of doing our homework and reviewing what many educators/journalists have previously offered up, we'd like to think na we can crack the code ourselves. So we'd pounce on random Reddit thread as grand discovery and pull a gotcha on a random Twitter rival.
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Sana lang Pinoy news media, celebrities and influencers help amplify the hard and patient work of historians, sociologists and media scholars just as they report Reddit “confessions” as breaking news. Akala ko ba gusto natin totoong analysis and insight?.
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Woke up from a nap and pinching myself whether this panel really happened 🥹🙏 @lenirobredo @BostonJoan @sushmaraman @lanuzer
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I’ve been asked to weigh in on the explosion of dummy accounts on Philippines Facebook especially in the wake of #JunkTerrorBillNow. Having tracked the evolution of disinfo campaigns since 2016, this is alarming as it represents a *break* from previous strategy. 1/8.
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Thrilled to get my physical copy of #TrollsforSale, a collection of short essays and lectures about the Philippines’ disinformation-for-hire industry and what we can do about it. We intended this to be accessible to all at Php220 from Lazada online:
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'They have been playing this long game, part of it was filling in information voids about martial law.' Ong said an early example came in 2015, when “architects of disinformation” used hashtags to garner support for Marcos’s reburial with state honors.'.
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Here's my op-ed for @TIME about how Marcos' victory will embolden other authoritarian incumbents & exiles & why it's urgent that progressives offer compelling narratives, explanatory devices, and inspiring future vision responding to publics' anxieties.
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I got to love my boomer Tito for helping documenting your research #impact and citations by no less than @lenirobredo. Grateful our work is nudging the Philippines' disinformation debate toward how to bridge parallel public spheres rather than reductive claims of "brainwashing".
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Omg what an endorsement 🥹💕🙏 thank you @aikarobredo! And I hope you especially love our newest episode “Bekis in Politics” 🌈.
I’ve been following @jonathan_c_ong’s podcast (you should check it out: , and happy to listen to @iamrodafrog this morning! :).
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Just published -- on my birthday no less -- investigative feature of Pro-Marcos and Duterte social media accounts callously celebrating Putin and blatantly spreading misinformation about the Ukraine invasion. 1/3.
Jonathan Ong is a co-author of the study Architects of Networked Disinformation: Behind the Scenes of Troll Accounts and Fake News Production in the Philippines. He continues to monitor online activities during the 2022 campaign.
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Promoted to Full Professor today! Whoever hypegirl Reviewer 4 is below, thank you! 😂 grateful to be in community with folks who inspire me to be audacious and weird with my research and the space-building work I’ve put in to support civil society partners and grad students 🙏♥️
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New anthology #TrollsforSale available soon in Philippines bookstores along with other terrific Philippine Studies titles. 🥂 Wish I can come home for a launch party but it'll have to be a virtual launch for now!
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Finally got an accept for this article on Filipino pseudonymous influencers. @samuelcabbuag and I explored the shadowy world of meme pages, 'hugot' love quotes accounts, and horny alt-Twitter bekis promoting politician hashtags and seeding crisis narratives. #halalan2022
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Since the Marcoses use “creative” mythmaking, the usual weapons do not work well against them. Fact-checking is not enough. Content takedown is not enough. What’s needed are diverse creative educational interventions targeting different age and ethnolinguistic groups. 9/11.
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The Dark Influence industry *thrives* on contract work. The lowly fake account operator, the paid influencer, and the political marketer are all hired by politicians and gov't offices on a per-project basis. In other words, nobody is a full-time troll. 1/3.
PCOO Undersecretary Kris Ablan reiterated that their social media specialists "[do] not equate to trolls" after state auditors flagged its hiring of 375 contract of service personnel in 2020. READ:
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She’s the first black Filipina Miss Universe Philippines. But not the “first woman of color” kasi di naman puti tayong Pilipino. Baka iba feeling white-adjacent ✌🏽.
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How do some anti-disinformation advocates overtly or inadvertently perpetuate anti-poor (anti-masa) sentiments? Why is it both tone deaf and simply inaccurate to say “Pinoys have lost free will” coz of Facebook? Our @mediacommoner colleagues explain:
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We want to blast open the anti-disinformation & digital literacy space in the Philippines and work with all new faces: you can be librarians, comedians, visual artists, high school teachers, disgruntled creatives, even disillusioned political staffers.
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VP @lenirobredo indeed started an inspiring and important movement that centered the imperative for listening and dialogue — even with those we disagree with. We need to continue this effort and work towards a more inclusive shared future. #Halalan2022
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What should we expect w big tech regulation under a MarcosJr presidency? Reporters have asked me if the #Philippines would follow suit other illiberal regimes controlling/censoring social media. I say, for now Marcos is cagey but there are important clues #phvote #Halalan2022 1/?.
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In solidarity with @BostonJoan a pioneer in the field of disinfo studies. She's also done SO much to support junior scholars, blast open the doors of Harvard to include all-new faces and challenge old paradigms.
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Very proud of this new piece connecting Brazil & the Philippines, part of our South-to-South knowledge exchange blog series. We argue for bottom-up learning across global South contexts when responding to specific digital harms rather than replicating EuroAmerican frameworks.
Disinformation and Election Narratives in Brazil and the Philippines: Cross-Country Learning for Democratic Resilience. Op-ed by Jose Mari Lanuza, @jonathan_c_ong, @grohmann_rafael, @raquelrecuero , @marceloufsj and .@camillatavares . South-to-South series
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Check out the Disinformation Innovations in the 2019 Philippine Elections. Our new study tracks the expansion of "fake news" producers from high-profile bloggers to micro-influencers operating at the level of small / closed groups. Read more:
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Liberal weapons of historical accuracy & fact-checking are no match for Marcos’ creative folklore. When the opposition went to the grassroots and had a dialogue with Marcos supporters, it was inspiring, monumental, and important, also too little too late.
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Eto na mga pasabog ni @supernegatrona who is all about fighting fire with fire, mixing it up with both pop culture and academic references, and drawing from their international educational pedigree. Maldita, soshal pero relatable 😝🗣🔥
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Lounge agent: “Ma’am, Sir, are you together po?” @NicoleCurato: “Together in what sense?” 🤣 indeed we’ve been “together” since UK grad school days and now academic godparents to a new generation of critical and engaged researchers in the Ph 🇵🇭
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Invited to the Philippines senate hearing investigating the Pentagon psy-ops exposed by @Reuters. For a disinfo researcher like me, the report begs deeper investigation by policymakers in the targeted countries. Some starting points to hold Pentagon and platforms accountable. 1/6
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Make sure you register using the correct link for this Hybrid Event in @kennedy_school. There's separate registrations for in-person and Zoom attendance. See you Friday 930AM EST / 930PM Manila time!.Link:
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Let's read extensively and cite generously. Other folks who have done incredible investigations of disinformation networks are @wddeguzman (who exposed Twinmark), @fatimagaw (with original YouTube analysis), @lanuzer @samuelcabbuag @rcfallorina (authors of the 1st TikTok study).
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Happy 15 years @Grindr and to stories of finding love in a hopeless place. Re-upping one of my favorite ethnographic pieces on uses of Grindr in a post-disaster context. Open access version:
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New anthology *Trolls for Sale* is now available in our publisher’s Lazada shop. The book is only Php220 and the full set of other amazing Required Readings is at P1,000 🔥🇵🇭📚 Add to cart: ➡️
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#softlaunch Proud to announce The Global Technology for Social Justice Lab at @UMassAmherst as a new interdisciplinary hub & trust network for scholars & practitioners at the intersection of critical tech studies & global studies.💫1/3
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It is still a very cool Pinoy flex we got Harvard to publish our report in bilingual formats. Thx @elmstweeet for the Filipino translation work & @tokwap for the (controversial!) infographics including of "Senator Satirist". Download either version here:
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Yet another disinfo paper? I know. 🤣 But I’m especially proud of our team’s latest offering, published by @Internews, which gives focus to the thriving counterdisinfo space in the country - actually the envy of many of our neighbours across Asia. 🧵
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Our new report & community engagement plan will offer collaborative opportunities linking up academic researchers with creatives, journalists & activists to collectively respond to influence operations. Discussants: @lenirobredo @bostonjoan @sushmaraman🤗.
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Our 2018 Architects of Networked Disinformation is getting new traction w interest in the “troll confessional” genre. We credit again the amazing @tokwap for our stunning artwork and Kay Aranzanso for layout. This was the first study interviewing trolls and PR operators 🫶🏽.
Hello! You can access the full report pdf online for free! Written by @jonathan_c_ong and Jason Vincent Cabañes , illustrated by yours truly, layout by Kay Aransanzo
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Much of the analysis has focused on Marcos’s alleged use of troll farms & bots to attack critics, Ong said. But what the campaign did effectively was to flood social media with a “creative archive” of Marcos “folklore” that appealed to many demographics.
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We academics need to reach out more to creatives, artists, storytellers, film producers for more artful, educational, and interactive storytelling that we can make accessible to all. 10/11.
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High-level strategists control the narrative but operate behind the scenes, yet occasionally they do flashy showboating of their influence operations in order to 1) impress prospective political clients (see what tricks I can do, hire me for the election!) 5/8
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Call for Participants: "True Costs of Misinformation" Workshop. Inviting folks to an ambitiously interdisciplinary in-person workshop that @BostonJoan & the TaSC team are organizing at the @Kennedy_School @ShorensteinCtr in March 2022. Please share widely!
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Our Asian Americans & Disinformation 2022 landscape report is summarized in this @NBCAsianAmerica piece. "In recent years, a network of social media accounts that spotlight incidents of Black-on-Asian assault have sprung up. " 1/3
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Just received a Reject for one research grant application. I'm OK and it's OK we talk and tweet about failure and we're gentle with ourselves and others ;).
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Instead of using outright lies, the Marcoses play with celebrity rebranding strategies: on YouTube, Imee Marcos leaned in on her “babaeng bakla” persona, and on TikTok they sold Sandro Marcos as a heartthrob and Irene as the elegant tita. 4/11.
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This is the Marcoses’ crafty media combo: falsehoods + fake victimhood wrapped in compelling myth and irresistible melodrama. This package allowed fantasy productions such as Maid in Malacañang to have a prominent place in public discourse. 7/11.
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No one needs to build anything from scratch -- what more in the complicated field of disinformation studies, where journalists, academics AND platforms all need to tread carefully under Marcos. We should build on the strong foundations others have generously laid out before us.
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Our new study "Politics and Profit in the Fake News Factory: Four Work Models of Political Trolling in the Philippines" compares the variety of work arrangements for digital political trolling that continue to hide in plain sight.
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Our recent NATO Stratcom study highlighted that in 2019 there was little evidence of automated influence; instead the strategies were 1) using micro-influencers and infiltrators of closed groups to manually seed narratives and 2) doubling-down on DDS-vs-dilawan rhetoric. 2/8
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Mass media organizations were either seized or shuttered by Ferdinand Marcos Sr. Today, his son President Bongbong Marcos makes clever use of a well-funded partisan information ecosystem for family rebranding and false victimhood narratives. 3/11.
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My fellow Pinoy academic colleagues are highly immersed in ontheground advocacies & engaged in politically risky congressional debates. We are sincerely looking to collaborate for deep investigations, practical interventions and educational content production. #neveragain 11/11.
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Finally out on @SSRC_items "Southeast Asia’s Disinformation Crisis: Where the State is the Biggest Bad Actor and Regulation is a Bad Word". I relate specific challenges of scholars'/activists' lobbying for tech regulation 'from below'. (1/4).
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Today, the Philippines commemorates the declaration of Martial Law by dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. On top of plundered public funds and the thousands of disappearances and killings, Marcos Sr. also used his position to distort the country’s media environment. 2/11.
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Thx for this feature on season2 of #CatchMeIfYouCan, dropping a special episode this Friday with the popular real-talk alt account @supernegatrona 🔥🔥🔥.
“The trolls we meet in the show are not what you imagine as unthinking copy-paste operators stuck in a Davao call center,” says @jonathan_c_ong “They’re college degree holders from good universities recruited for well-paying side gigs.”
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Journalists covering the Philippines elections (or any other elections for that matter) can be more mindful about which voices they represent in their talk shows / feature articles / podcasts #eleksyon2022 #halalan2022 1/4.
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Sharing highlights from our elections study published in August 2019 for added context on sinophobia in the Philippines in the wake of the coronavirus.
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and/or 2) create public distraction that would exhaust our emotional energies. I’m personally worried as I can see that my mom has several fake accounts. I also see that some cheapfakes have faces & even homophobic slurs - so what data do they have access to?!? 6/8.
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Here too is @MichAllTogether's important piece exposing the advertising industry's dirty secret from way back in 2019:
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to me the use of automated "cheapfakes" raise the primary question of how this was actually done before we speculate on why this was done. I would begin by asking Facebook and cybersecurity investigators: 1) To what extent is this automated or manually operated? 3/8.
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Imelda Marcos has blamed the media for portraying them as a family of thieves. BongBong has also insinuated that journalists “have their own agenda”. Imee has also accused Facebook of bias for their choice of local fact-checking partners. 6/11.
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The Marcoses presented narratives that tap on Pinoys’ sympathy for perceived underdogs: 'indeed, if a powerful family like them can be victimized by the liberal elites, how much more damage can they inflict on us?' 8/11.
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On top of these are broader storylines that paint the Marcoses as the “real victims” of liberal elites. They have blamed politicians, academics, and journalists as suppressing “the real truth” about EDSA. 5/11.
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2) Was there a security breach / data hack that exposed our private info? What other info of ours do they have access to? From 3 years of interviewing "trolls" & disinformation architects, the sophisticated ops are NOT carried out by cheapfakes or influencers like Mocha Uson 4/8.
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Many eager folks new in the Philippines disinformation space have asked, what exactly have academics, journalists & civil society been up to? Answer: A LOT -- and we still need help. Here is an overview of anti-disinfo activities and the many gaps left:
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Our 2019 NATO Stratcom Study on 4 work models of Political Trolling in the PH, which list the diverse kinds of workers complicit to this work is linked here: 7/8
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Terrific 'sociology of the newsroom' style article from idol @SheilaCoronel: 'The staff struggled to focus on their work. "Park your feelings,” the executive editor, Glenda Gloria, had said. “This election is not about you.”'
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Our Architects of Networked Disinformation research based on original interviews with paid trolls -- and they're not exactly who you think 8/8
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In time for #LaborDay I partnered with awardwinning @PumaPodcastPH team for y'all to hear our interviews with paid trolls & strategists discussing the business of political campaigns. Hear them *try* to justify themselves. Find out what pushes them to quit
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In other news - Covid finally hit me. 😭 Will be slower replying to emails and getting back to y’all.
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Excuse me while I 😭😭😭 sipping my herbal tea and rolling my tourmaline bracelets ✨
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So honored to be among the "15 noted researchers" in the disinformation field, with Architects of Networked Disinformation in the "top 5 most useful studies", from @Poynter's global poll of fact-checkers.
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Excited to share our study on disinformation in Southeast Asia published by NATO StratCom. @RossTapsell and I compare Indonesia, Philippines, and Thailand to identify disinformation innovations and narratives and tech regulation trends in the region (1/4)
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Happy to see this make the rounds again thanks to the wave of troll confessions. 'Troll-hunting' must start from the top and we need to hold accountable the political elites and their chief #disinformationarchitects / ad and PR strategists.
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In the eve of #Philippines elections, masterminds of digital operations continue to hide in plain sight. Interventions have only hit easy targets, allowing bad actors to morph, evolve and professionalize. See our "Architects of Networked Disinformation"
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COA is correct to raise alarm about these exploitative service contracts and we need to ask what memes, campaigns, 'engagements' workers were paid to do. Our focus should be less about shaming service workers but assigning responsibility to the chief architects at the PCOO. 3/3
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Call for Papers: "Disinformation-for-Hire and Click Farming around the World" spesh ish for @SocialMedia_Soc. Two more weeks till the abstract deadline, and we're looking for theoretical contributions reframing key assumptions in disinfo studies & rich empirical work. Pls share!
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The @Reuters report on the Pentagon's COVID disinformation in Central & Southeast Asia hasn't received wide coverage. In this op-ed I call for an international civilian-led cooperative to investigate platforms' negligence toward targeted countries 1/4
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To #FightDisinfo, we need to understand that disinformation architects are not exceptional villains backed only by state powers; they’re creative professionals whose skills are 4 sale. Need 2 develop safety nets 2 prevent workers from slipping into digital underground @mariaressa
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Important new piece by @SheilaCoronel clarifying Marcos Jr. strategies of information control: "This is a new model, involving not big broadcasters or newspapers, but a multitude of micro-influencers. It’s not Cambridge Analytica-style targeting either."
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So happy our article is finally out in Intl Journal of Communication @USCApress "When Disinformation Studies Meets Production Studies", exploring how political troll work is circumscribed within creative industry practices. This benefited greatly from the review process [1/5]
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Thrilled that we're guest-blogging for @datasociety key findings from our report Architects of Networked Disinformation. We discussed the work arrangements and moral justifications of 'paid troll' workers from 1year of ethnographic fieldwork
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Honoured to be part of y’all’s new year book lists 😍.
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Download now: 70-page report "Architects of Networked Disinformation: Behind the Scenes of Troll Accounts and #FakeNews Production in the Philippines". This is a @phBritish-funded project with unprecedented access to "paid trolls" that hide in plain sight
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Filipino version out today: "Mga Mundo na Hindi Magtagpo". Thanks @elmstweeet for offering our team his makata-level translation skills and helping us publish the first bilingual disinformation reports for @Kennedy_School @ShorensteinCtr. For those still here, pls share away!
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Racism isn't simply about hate speech but our selective empathy and the politics of choosing what we share or amplify. In this article, anthropologist @gideonlasco and I throw shade at irresponsible journalists, pundits and influencers.
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I'm thinking how the pundits behind "Facebook broke democracy in the PH" in 2016 have moved on in 2022 with the same tech determinism to say "TikTok teens who dont know their history broke democracy" yet again. Voters are not granted agency, strategy and cunning. #PHVote.
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So it was never gonna be sports and only Miss Universe can unite all the Pinoy fake accounts, hyperpartisan microinfluencers, and thirsttrap instagrammers into shared dream and common hashtags. #wildcard #backtoback 👑😂.
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I’m honored / humbled / flabbergasted that I’m the opening keynote for National Academy of Sciences Workshop on Social Media and Disinformation - organized by Nobel Winner in Physics Saul Perlmutter and the pride of Saugus and brilliant researcher @BostonJoan. Join us👇🏽.
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🎂Thanks for coming to my birthday… er, Asian American Digital Politics Workshop. I feel inspired by these brilliant beautiful people @norasuren @matthew_bui @rachelkuo @YenaKang7 @kxraja @FylproMabuhay @gabriellelim @emsuna @pyo_jane @CAAsanfrancisco @computermacgyve @ShirKi
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Important @WIRED piece about the culture of armed vigilantism in the PH and the distinct problems such crisis events pose for social media content policy and newsroom rooms. Quoted along with terrific researchers @lanuzer @fatimagaw @telliotter.
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🚩🚩🚩 “Hello researcher of the global South. We want you to conduct a one-off Zoom webinar how to fight fake news. No you’re not allowed to comment on curriculum nor cite examples of bad interventions in case it upsets the same funders nudging our program to this direction.
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Blockbuster work 👏 I hope this study triggers official investigations & transparency mechanisms for the influencer economy & political pr industry. Great new methodology about “costing” misinfo/influence ops. Cc: @tonylavs @lente_ph @LTFGuia @PCIJdotOrg @robyalampay @BostonJoan.
Our goal is to derive an estimate of covert influencer operations for presidential and VP campaigns in the 2022 Philippine Elections. We used qualitative fieldwork, computational methods, and economic modeling to arrive at our findings. We find that:
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When do paid trolls finally quit their job? When does conscience kick in? Hear "Danny" explain the guilt and shame he experienced when his college professor catches him in public at a shady politician's campaign sortie. This is Ep1 of #CatchMeIfYouCan powered by @pumapodcastPH
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Catch the Digital Disinformation Tracker team tomorrow on @cnnphilippines’ coverage of #TheFilipinoVotes. We’ll report on how influencer culture has shaped the campaign, the nefarious new forms and evolution of “fake news”, and what platforms and comelec can do better! 🇵🇭
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A magazine put Bongbong on their anniversary issue’s cover page in 1990 next to the words, “the best and the brightest”. For Imee’s 60th birthday, she posed for the cover of the Philippine Tatler’s fashion issue wearing a gown in blood red -@NicoleCurato
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Join us in a few minutes for the launch of our new study. We also launch a Community Engagement Plan, which is a call for collaborators that can take forward our recommendations. Grateful to our discussants too: @lenirobredo @BostonJoan @SushmaRaman
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FYI esp to Filipino and Hong Kong frens on my socials: Coronavirus coverage still no excuse to post and share clickbaity lazily aggregated dehumanizing “news” from traditionally racist Daily Mail UK 🤮.
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Disinformation-for-hire PR firms have powerful lobby groups too and they're cozy with the politicians they helped put to office. Our experience in the PH is that politicians make public rituals of going after select influencers, but never the firms behind strategic campaigns.
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