Trolls

The document discusses social media becoming a space for misinformation and disinformation, with government and politicians being major actors in spreading fake news. It notes 51% of Filipinos have difficulty identifying fake news, so platforms should faster takedowns of deceiving posts. While trolls spread disinformation, responsibility also lies with the chief architects operating behind the scenes.

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Trolls

Uploaded by

Shaira Mae Yecpot

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The Gray Shade Behind Raucous Trolls

The advent of social media has become an advanced and newfangled repository of news and
information across the world. But eventually, it became a predominant space contributing to the
escalation of misinformation and disinformation.
The research-based talk presented by Dr. Jonathan Corpus Ong, an Associate Professor of Global
Digital Media in the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, has divulged the "architecture of
networked disinformation," the existence of hierarchized and politicized machineries that operate
to distort and manipulate public information.
Dr. Ong argued that government and politicians are the biggest actors to social media
disinformation. Yes—it might be too straightforward to account the rampancy of such
phenomenon to the government, who is supposedly expected to be a major catalyst of truth and
justice yet, this corroborates with
a study of Turcilo and Obrenovic which purports that "government officials and/or their closest
aides are involved in producing and spreading fake news themselves." Although the digital
platform is a perquisite to the convenience of realizing governmental movements and
transactions, it posts a disadvantage knowing "the alarming number of episodes involving the use
of social media platforms to manipulate elections and public debate."(Turcilo and Obrenovic,
2020, p. 64).
Fifty-one percent of Filipinos find it difficult to spot fake news (Social Weather Station, 2021).
With the outbreak of disinformation, it is right that social media platforms like Facebook, Tiktok,
Twitter and etc. should have faster takedowns. Tons of deceiving posts are circulating online.
Thus, these platforms may impose features that ensure credibility of sources since anything in
social media can easily spread.
Due to an empathic approach to the factors that push people to engage in disinformation work,
Ong and Cabañes suggest to assign responsibilities to those chief architects of networked
disinformation instead of unmasking trolls at the bottom. With the assertion that if these elites
take measures to stop operations, then it's easier to break the hierarchy. However, despite the
political, social and financial drives, we should still hold these trolls accountable.
References
Ong, J. C. (2018). Architects of Networked Disinformation: Behind the Scenes of Troll Accounts
and Fake News Production in the Philippines. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.7275/2cq4-5396
Social Weather Stations. (2022, February 25). Fourth Quarter 2021, Social Weather Survey: 69%
of adult Filipino say the problem of fake news in social media is serious. Retried from
http://www.sws.org.ph/swsmain/artcldsppage/?artcsyscode=ART-20220225130129
Turcilo L. and Obrenovic M., (2020, August). A Company to Democracy #3 Misinformation,
Disinformation, Malinformation: Causes, Trends, and their Influence on Democracy. Heinrich
Boll Stiftung