Redeeming social media

SOCIAL media has received a lot of bad press, particularly given impetus by communication scholars who capitalized on the hypothesis that political extremism has been largely fueled by fake news on social media. In the runup to the 2022 presidential elections, the popular narrative espoused by mainstream media, which drew a lot of oxygen from studies conducted by allegedly independent fact-checkers and purportedly unbiased academics, was that fakery and disinformation propelled the rise of President Rodrigo Duterte.

They alleged that the same social media platforms of disinformation enabled the candidacy and eventual victory of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

I have long challenged the prevalence of these narratives, not because they do not have empirical basis. I challenged them for the reason that they have been weaponized politically by partisans who took on the image of neutrality and objectivity simply because they are journalists and academics. It was an entirely palpable pattern of academics producing empirical data showing Duterte and Marcos benefiting from online disinformation campaigns, being reproduced, posted and aired on many mainstream media platforms. While it can be granted that these are based on data that may have been derived through scientific processes, or some defensible systematic methods, they merely presented evidence to support what was already a preordained conclusion.

Any qualitative researcher would tell us that while qualitative research gives us an opportunity to have an in-depth look into a particular phenomenon, it is however limited by the fact that results cannot be easily generalized. They are only as good to represent those who have been chosen and selected to be participants or respondents, or those who have been identified as cases. A study that purposely focused only on prominent proDuterte and pro-Marcos bloggers and vloggers would definitely reveal a higher incidence of possible disinformation that favors them. The fact that social media is dominated by these kinds of influencers, which is empirically established and supported by data, would necessarily and logically lead to the conclusion that proDuterte and pro-Marcos disinformation is more prevalent in social media platforms.

Methodologically, a more scientific approach would have been to compare the relative prevalence of disinformation among all types of social media enablers across all political persuasions and loyalties. This would have been more useful instead of simply focusing on pro-Duterte and pro-Marcos bloggers and vloggers, and using absolute frequency, and not relative frequency.

A more fatal flaw of these claims about pro-Duterte and pro-Marcos disinformation is that they focus on social media platforms alone. While it is a legitimate area of study, it fails to give a complete picture of the flow of disinformation in our political landscape. Thus, mainstream media, whether in broadcast or print, as well as in their own social media accounts, escape scrutiny for their biases, which could also lead to them becoming active bearers of misinformation or disinformation. This is a blank wall in terms of coverage by media itself, and in the academic landscape populated by studies done by communication scholars.

Fact-checking has been a lucrative industry among critics of Duterte, and now of Marcos. This led to the partisan weaponization of fact-checking, rendering it as weapons against a chosen enemy, and rendering it no longer as a potential weapon to reveal the truth. In the US, fact-checking is done not only on President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, but it is also done on Donald Trump, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the Republicans. Media anchors and commentators also openly criticize other media outlets particularly when they peddle disinformation and lies.

This is something that is not happening in the Philippines. We have long ceded fact-checking to the partisan journalists in Rappler and their cohorts in other news outlets for them to weaponize it to a point that Marcos and anyone close to him, his allies and his supporters, or even just anyone who says something favorable about him, are instantly fact-checked. This, even as no one ever fact-checks the political opposition, or if so, this is rare. Nobody from mainstream media fact-checked the defeated presidential candidate, despite the many instances when she should have been called out.

And there seems to be a code of silence among mainstream media when it comes to calling out the bias and unprofessionalism of their own colleagues in other networks and outlets.

This phenomenon has thus further amplified the partisan nature of social media which thus favored Duterte, and now Marcos. Denied of what could be objective coverage in mainstream media as enabled by partisan scholars, and with fact-checking now effectively sequestered by their critics, the diehard Duterte supporters and Marcos loyalists populated and colonized with a vengeance social media platforms. They ended up hating both mainstream media and academia in the process.

If we truly want to minimize disinformation in our political communication universe, we cannot just focus our ire on social media. This would need mainstream media to begin shedding off their own partisan biases, and break this code of silence about the partisan and biased practices of their own cohorts. We need to rescue fact-checking from the partisan claws of Rappler and its kind. We need to remind academics and scholars to check and manage their partisan biases.

Social media is not the problem. In fact, it is an opportunity. It is now used to propagate awareness about lifesaving, and life-enhancing developments, not only by government agencies, but by a vast array of organizations, from universities to NGOs.

Meanwhile, we need more objective, fairer and nuanced voices in political blogging and vlogging in social media. The best way to check disinformation in social media is not to censor or take them down using methods that violate free speech rights. The better way is to wage a war with them by inviting more rational and balanced views. The best way to deal with lies in social media goes beyond merely characterizing it as weaponized by proDuterte and pro-Marcos forces. We simply tell the truth without any partisan lens.