Pseudonymous Influencers and Horny 'Alts' in the Philippines: Media Manipulation Beyond "Fake News'"
Publication Date
2022
Journal or Book Title
The Journal of Socio-Technical Critique
Abstract
This paper explores the limits of the frame “disinformation” when exploring the growing industry of pseudonymous influencers who occasionally campaign for politicians and seed crisis frames. Pseudonymous influencers in the form of parody accounts, meme pages, and romantic love quotes (hugot) accounts, and horny queer "alt" accounts have been able to evade disinformation interventions such as fact-checking because their media manipulation objectives are less focused on spreading false news and more directed toward signal boosting politically-slanted hashtags or promoting electioneering politicians. By mapping a diverse ecosystem of pseudonymous influencers in the Philippines, our paper contributes an important global South case study to understand the political economy of disinformation and the complicities of influencer industries with disinformation and “dark PR” (Edwards, 2021).
Volume
2
Issue
2
License
UMass Amherst Open Access Policy
Funder
This article is based on research funded by the SEARBO project at Australian National University (2019) and the Media Ecosystems Analysis Group (MEAG) (2021-2022).
Recommended Citation
Ong, Jonathan Corpus and Cabbuag, Samuel, "Pseudonymous Influencers and Horny 'Alts' in the Philippines: Media Manipulation Beyond "Fake News'"" (2022). The Journal of Socio-Technical Critique. 132.
Retrieved from https://scholarworks.umass.edu/communication_faculty_pubs/132