Disinformation and misinformation have increased in number and diversified in delivery as can be observed by simply opening your social media account. Thanks to the Internet and social media platforms, anyone can be a manipulator or sharer and producer of disinformation with little to zero accountabilities attached due to the available option of using fake identities in which people could say whatever they want to say in however way they want it.
To make a distinction, misinformation is any kind of wrong or false information which could be unintentional. Although it bears similarity, misinformation is different from bias which uses facts but is concerned mainly with prejudice in favor for or against someone or something. Disinformation, meantime, is usually a mixture of the two with the strong flavor of intent. It is a deliberate tactical manipulation which misleads or favors someone or something. In disinformation, narratives or facts are spun as a propaganda.
Tabuk City is not immune to problems relating to factual information as Tabukenos are becoming more and more drawn to getting their news from the mediated world. The big problem, however, is not the misinformation but the disinformation which from time to time shakes and rattles people into dramatic reactions, comments, and wrong decisions. The disinformation in Tabuk City has gone high tech although strategies employed by manipulators remain largely the same.
The disinformation campaign could be characterized into three main features: 1) Disinformation is usually made by people paid for by or those beholden to politicians using fake accounts, 2) and thus disinformation is mostly connected to politics purposed to either create a good image for their boss and bad image against their rival, 3) it is presented with the absence of official documents or pieces of evidence or flawed logic laden with ad hominem (character assassination) and vulgarity.
The social media game of several groups in Tabuk City’s media landscape is both liberating and disturbing.
Liberating in the sense that the socio-political discourse is brought under the control of only one group of manipulators. Other players can express their opinions and thoughts regarding the many issues of corruption, bad governance, questionable check and balance and ill-informed decision making within the City LGU.
Disturbing in some ways as people who have no motivation to seek the truth can be tossed to and fro, swayed by prevailing currents, and be swallowed by lies, deceptions and manufactured truths. This can leave them mis and dis-informed to make the right decisions in their social and political participation.
It appears that it is difficult to encourage Tabukenos to actively exercise their rights to be informed, to transparency and freedom of expression due to fears of being tagged as enemies of political groups which can in turn do them a disservice - being an enemy of ruling parties could mean becoming a recipient of punitive attacks such a threats, losing a job, losing a promotion or even a non-renewal of business permit. This could be the reason why there is a growing number of fake accounts exposing corruption, nonfeasance, malfeasance and misfeasance in government.
In the disinformation and social media game, there is no better anti-dote against manipulations than that for people to seek evidence in forming their opinions and to appeal to reason. In the end, it is the people, not the politicos, who will suffer more from making wrong decisions of putting “crocodiles” in public office.
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