Democracy under Threat: Post-Truth Politics and Democracy in the Philippines

Lead Researcher(s): Noe John Joeph E. Sacramento
Status: Published

Abstract/summary: Today, the political landscape where boundaries between fact and fiction have been blurred have extended to reach the regions of the Global South, like the Philippines. In this growing traction in search for truths, this paper investigates the intersections between post-truth politics, social media, and democracy in the Philippines. First, it will argue that the technical conditions for the rise of an omnipresence of (dis) information has supported the post-truth environment in the Philippines. Second, the paper will further argue that post-truth, as it takes place in the Philippines today, mobilizes what we will call as the paradox of disinformation-based “truths” (DBTs). DBTs result from post-truth’s tendency towards alternate truths which ironically blur the lines between truth and falsity. DBTs will be traced through the political discourse propagated by both state and non-state actors. Through critical discourse analysis aided by distant (digital) reading, it will analyze the Facebook pages of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and the tandem presidency of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte. What characterizes the Philippine situation today is the widespread proliferation of DBTs that, on the one hand, potentially challenge the democratic exercise of reflection and discernment and, on the other hand, tend towards authoritarian consolidation. Democracy is threatened both by the incapacity to discern and the institutional and state-initiated efforts to consolidate authoritarianism.

Keywords:

• democracy
• narratives
• politics
• post-truth
• technology