Keywords: South China Sea; Duterte; foreign policy; pivot to China; information campaigns

Introduction

Based on current values from the World Bank, the Philippines’ total population is estimated at 113 million as of 2021. Of this number, 85 million are Internet users at the start of 2023, 84 million of whom use social media. These numbers reveal that a vast percentage of the population is active on social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, and spend an average of more than three hours online daily. Facebook alone has about 80 million users in the Philippines, making it the platform of choice for communication, information, and commerce. Social media use in the Philippines has been so pervasive that it became a mobilizing factor in the last two national elections. In fact, President Rodrigo Duterte relied heavily on social media to magnify his strongman stance during the 2016 elections. He declared in a press conference, “I will ask the Navy to bring me to the nearest point in [the] South China Sea that is tolerable to them, and I will ride a jet ski. I will carry a flag, and when I reach [the] Spratlys, I will erect the Filipino flag. I will tell [China], suntukan o barilan (fistfight or gunfight)?” Running on a platform of purging the country of illegal drugs and criminality, he also vowed to solve these perennial problems within six months of his holding office. When the United States and other Western countries criticized his war on drugs, he called President Barack Obama a “son of a whore” for raising human rights concerns with him. Meanwhile, the 2022 elections that led to the victory of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., the son of the former dictator and his namesake, tapped into TikTok, YouTube, and messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and Viber.