DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / ) — Several Pro-Duterte pages on Facebook posted the same social media cards showing Vice President Sara Duterte’s ”high trust ratings” from surveys on the country’s top government officials.
Last May 23, the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino – Lakas ng Bayan (PDP Laban), which adopted Duterte as vice presidential candidate in the May 2022 elections, posted on its Facebook page the card hailing her high trust rating of 71 percent in the first quarter of 2024, based on a survey conducted by Pulse Asia last March 6 to 10.
However, the PDP Laban post did not say that such rating was a decline from 78 percent from the previous quarter, October to December 2023. PDP Laban is chaired by former President Rodrigo Duterte, the Vice President’s father.
The post generated 662 reactions, 84 comments and 164 shares as of Wednesday, June 19.
The Vice President’s performance rating also significantly dropped to 67 percent in the first quarter of 2024 from 74 percent in the last quarter of 2023, the Pulse Asia survey result showed.
In another survey conducted by OCTA Research during the same period, Duterte’s ratings also showed a significant drop. Her trust rating declined from 77 percent in December 2023 to 68 percent in March 2024. On the other hand, Duterte’s satisfaction rating fell to 64 percent in March 2024 from 75 percent in December 2023.
Using Meta’s Crowdtangle tool, MindaNews found out that the PDP Laban’s Facebook post about the surveys favorable to Sara Duterte would yield three more pages posting the same screenshot and similar messages.
The screenshot above was used by pro-Duterte Facebook pages Jose Razel Laurente, Johny Johny, and Unofficial: TATAY Digong & Bongbong Marcos Solid Supporters .
Jose Razel Laurente identifies himself as a vlogger with 10K followers and claims to be from Lapu-Lapu City. The uniform resource locator (URL) site for his page is facebook.com/Du30MarcosSolidSupporters, which pushed the Duterte-Marcos alliance during the 2016 and 2022 presidential elections.
For their part, Unofficial: TATAY Digong & Bongbong Marcos Solid Supporters has around 19K followers. The page Johny Johny has around 3.2K followers.
These three pages posted the same screenshot and emojis at 5:20 a.m. on May 24. These pages also post similar contents and topics, such as showbiz, sports, and other current events.
Meanwhile, a page named Inday Sara Nation posted a customized card at 11:36 a.m. on May 24, which retained some of PDP Laban’s content posted on May 23.
However, the Inday Sara Nation page erroneously stated the trust rating of Duterte in the first quarter of 2024 was 78 percent, and not 71 percent as the Pulse Asia result showed. The 78 percent trust rating was actually her rating in the fourth quarter of 2023.
The post’s caption, in Filipino, bragged about Duterte’s high ratings from 2022 to 2024, claiming it is a testament of her “continuous work – quiet but doing her job.” It also enumerated some of the Vice President’s projects.
“Patunay na tuloy tuloy lang sa pagta trabaho ng ating Bise Presidente, tahimik pero gumagawa. Kaya naman mas marami pa rin ang nagtiriwala (sic) sa kanya ta (sic) tapat na sumusuporta sa kanyang mandato bilang public servant ng ating Bansa (sic),” it said.
[Translation: This is proof that our Vice President continues to work diligently, and quietly but effectively. That is why more people still trust and sincerely support her mandate as a public servant of our country.)
Survey polls have been historically helpful to potential electoral candidates in the Philippines. According to a research paper titled “Polling in Developing Democracies – The Case of the Philippines” by Mercedes Abad and Ophelia Ramirez published in 2008, potential candidates can even use this to benchmark their strategies as the campaign period approaches.
The study also showed that the survey polls’ ranking of candidates, especially the polls approaching the election day, “is generally consistent with the actual count as published by the Commission on Elections.”
In this connection, the sharing of the PDP-Laban post by pro-Duterte groups could qualify as an influence operation (IO) to influence the views of the public.
Influence operation involves the use of disinformation, propaganda and other possible harmful content (such as harassment and attacks), delivered in different formats, in a manner that coerces or manipulates behavior and polarizes society.
According to the DISARM Foundation, a United States-based non-profit engaged in monitoring and understanding influence operation and disinformation behavior in online platforms, influence operation may use content from other legitimate sources with proper attribution.
An influence operation may also use copypasta, or simply copy-pasting of information or text to drive a certain idea multiple times across various online sites. Its final form may differ from its original source text as users add, delete, or otherwise edit the content as they repost the message, it said.
Influence operation is not illegal in the Philippines, however.
On Wednesday, June 19, Vice President Duterte resigned as Education Secretary and vice chairperson of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, amid the growing conflict between her and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s family. (Ian Carl Espinosa / MindaNews)
(This alert was produced with support from an Internews initiative aiming to build the capacity of news organizations to understand and monitor disinformation and influence operations in the Philippines.)
