The role of Facebook influencers in shaping the narrative of the Duterte era

In 2016, 16 million Filipinos elected Rodrigo Duterte into the presidency. His campaign was founded on populist narratives and heavily used social media, especially Facebook influencers, who helped shape his political campaign. Similarly, Duterte critics also used Facebook to criticise his populist agenda. With the Philippines having one of the highest Facebook penetration, Facebook has been weaponised for implementing disinformation campaigns and discourse-hijacking campaigns for political agenda (Ong and Cabañes, 2018). Using quantitative content analysis as a method, the purpose of this paper is to assess how Rodrigo Duterte, his main campaign platforms, and critical political issues like human rights and law and order, COVID-19, and Philippine-China relations were portrayed across Facebook pages of pro-Duterte and anti-Duterte influencers. The study looks at the most common rhetorical devices used by Facebook influencers, as well as the prevalence and intensity of incivility, intolerance, and hate speech present in political discourse on Facebook from January 2019-December 2020. This thesis makes three main contributions in the field of political communication. First, I contribute to the study of how social media is used for political communication and how it can impact political discourse. This is a field of research where non-Western countries including many in Asia, like the Philippines, have been understudied despite being early adopters of technology. My thesis forms part of a wider challenge to de-Westernize research in the field of media and communication, and particularly in respect of developing scholarship sensitive to concerns within and about the global South. Second, my study contributes empirically through the application of quantitative content analysis to a specific case study and one that gives us an insight into a different political and cultural landscape compared to most existing research. By using this method, I have made significant findings such as analysing the main rhetorical devices used by the influencers in their permanent campaigns, in presenting narratives that are politically divisive, and as well as in analysing the types of incivility, intolerance, and hate speech present in their posts. Third, my study contributes to the conceptual framework on the topics of incivility and intolerance by creating a visualisation of the scales of political speech which has never been done before. This visualisation, while still in an early stage of development, can already be replicated in other studies of incivility and intolerance and has the potential to evolve if used in different contexts. My analysis of the Facebook posts by the ten influencers show four main findings. One, using Benoit’s functional theory, I found that attacks on character were the most prominent rhetorical device used by both pro-Duterte and anti-Duterte influencers during the period of data collection, which includes the 2019 midterm elections. Second, using Aristotle’s theory of persuasion, I found that both groups of influencers use rhetorical devices to talk to their echo chambers, with posts mostly catering to the people who already follow them and believe in their causes. Third, by using the scales of political speech visualisation that I developed for this study, I found that anti-Duterte influencers posted more uncivil and intolerant posts in general but that pro-Duterte influencers posted more intense forms of intolerance – incitements to violence, extremist views, and hate speech – that may threaten democracy. Fourth, by looking at the mean engagement of these posts, I also found that these incitements to violence, extremist views, and hate speech posts by pro-Duterte influencers have a disproportionately high mean engagement (reactions, comments, and shares). Through these original contributions and my findings, my thesis contributes to the advancement of knowledge and discussions on the role of social media in the rise of illiberalism globally. My study also paves the way for future projects, both inside and outside academia, on the evolving landscape of digital media and how society can respond to the challenges posed by digital media in democracies.