By Magi Ruth Fernandez, 1st-year AB International Studies student at University of San Jose-Recoletos
It’s hard to save people from falling into the pits of disinformation when the path is so similar to the one that will take them to paradise.
Since the previous presidential elections, we are seeing growing patterns of news mistrust. We see a lot of people who choose to listen to influencers and media personalities instead of news outlets. In an alarming wave, there appear to be some who are blatantly accusing news outlets of attempting to brainwash the masses.
Amidst the rise of personality politics and voters taking elections as a war between factions, people are becoming more selective on the information that they consume. The intuitive thought would be “perhaps people are choosing to be blind to the truth”, but take a moment to acknowledge that the problem might run deeper than that. Oftentimes, you might notice that these people are in a compromised position that makes it hard for them to see the bigger picture. Some of these people are stuck in their own echo chambers that enhance what they want to believe because they feel that national interests do not align with their needs. You can say that underrepresented communities feel this way towards national politics; that’s why they tend to become overly adherent to any candidate that sees them because the greater majority don’t.
The internet shows you what you want to see. We might choose what we want to read from the array of content in our news feed, but we have no control over the extent of what we get to see. If what you are is a raging fanatic of a K-pop group, expect your recommended videos on YouTube to be of that group. Your media activity reveals patterns of what you like and dislike; it is then able to craft you a news feed that will make you stay and doomscroll for hours. That is how the algorithm was set up. So if an individual seeks recognition, the media will give you just that. It will serve you testimonials of politicians that notice your struggles.
With that said, we can see how easy this is to be weaponized. During the 2024 US elections, disinformation played a huge part in its outcome. When Trump said undocumented immigrants received aid funding from the state after a hurricane, mega-influencers used this opportunity to capture the attention of Trump supporters and fuel their support for the now US president’s plans. This false claim gave birth to memes and satirical content—content that is palatable and easy to spread. The kind of content that people with preimposed beliefs would want to read and the kind of content that people who do not want to be proven wrong would gravitate to.
Let’s draw a comparison here in the Philippines. The thicker the borders are that categorize politicians into clans and factions, the stronger the polarization is among the voters. A lot of the voting population swerves towards a specific group and votes their entire slate straight if it means outvoting the opposing faction. It is easy to get lost in the competition and easier to be swayed by personalities. Some people get so caught up in making their chosen candidates win that they sometimes fail to see their lapses —which, most of the time, do exist. Of course, it is hard to do so when your social media accounts are only filled with content that praises them, burying mishaps or past incompetencies with grand displays of AI-generated posters. These kinds of people often turn against the press because it shows them news that contradicts their image of their idols. The other end of the political spectrum shrugs them off as a problem but often misses the fact that this is a byproduct of a bigger one. These people, perhaps even against their better judgment, cling to the hope that their candidates carry because they think that’s the only way to survive.
People repel the news that might drown out this flicker of hope. It is hard to reject content that agrees with you, and the press does not always do it. The best way to kill democracy is by turning the people against the press. Giving them the impression that they make their own decisions themselves when, in fact, they are only being fed with what they want to see and not the whole truth. In another world, perhaps the problem ends when you tell people to read and fact-check. Admittedly, that’s a huge part of what we need to do too. But for a population who creates their own version of reality because they don’t survive in the real one, it takes more than that.
When we take a step back, we’ll find ourselves asking the wrong question. The discourse should not be about pinning the blame on voters that believe whatever they see. It should be about satisfying their immediate needs so that they won’t seek the false gratification that this misinformation gives them. Mega influencers are taking advantage of people’s vulnerabilities by feeding them what they want to consume so that they can amass views. The voter population is not stupid. They are hungry and tired, and they cling to any hope that they can get. It’s not their fault they feel they can only get it from these sources.