Architects of Networked

Disinformation
(Behind the Scenes of Troll Accounts and fake
news production in the Philippines)
By: Jonathan Corpus Ong & Jason Vincent A.
Cabañes

Reporter:
Dianne Fae A. Yago
Jonathan Corpus Ong
Jason Vincent A. Cabañes
Architects of Networked Disinformation

can be described as a democratized but

hierarchized network of loose relations
amongst the producers of digital
disinformation campaigns.

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Architects of Networked Disinformation
Networked disinformation here refers
to the organized production of political
deception that distributes
responsibilities to diverse and loosely
interconnected groups of hierarchized
digital workers.

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Who are the person behind?

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 Who are the person behind?
▪ Politician Person

A person active in politics, holding or seeking an

office in government.

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 Who are the person behind?
▪ Chief Architects of Network Disinformation

Elite advertising and PR strategies:

They liaise with political clients and set
campaign objectives.

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 Who are the person behind?
▪ Digital Influencers

1. Anonymous Influencers :

Anonymous operators of social media pages with

humorous/Inspirational/Pop culture content :
they translate campaign messages into viral
posts.

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 Who are the person behind?

2. Key Opinion Leaders

> Celebrities and pundits with highly

engaged fans and followers on social
media: they carry core campaign
messages.

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 Who are the person behind?
▪ Community – Level Fake Account Operators

Precarious middle-class workers

subcontracted by AD and PR strategists or
hired by politicians' chief-of-staff: they
amplify reach and create " illusions of
engagement."

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 Who are the person behind?
▪ Grassroots Intermediaries
Politicians' fan page moderators, unpaid
opinion leaders, volunteer political
organizers.

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 Who are the person behind?
▪ Public

Concerning the people as a whole/ the people

of a country, state, etc.

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How it works?
❖ Chief Architects of Network Disinformation
Chief disinformation architects’ main responsibility is
to generate and inspire support through online
engagement. To achieve this, they recruit a team of
anonymous digital influencers and fake account
operators to seed core campaign messages in online
spaces and create “illusions of engagement” to
inspire enthusiasm from real supporters.

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Digital Influencers/Anonymous Influencers/Key Opinion
Leaders
anonymous digital influencers who usually operate
one or more anonymous accounts (think: comedy or
inspirational pages on Twitter and Facebook) that
entertain their followers with their specific brand of
hilarity or commentary while occasionally slipping in
paid content into their feed.

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Community-level Fake Account Operators
These workers are tasked to follow what we call
script-based disinformation work, which consists of posting
written and/or visual content previously designed by the
strategists on a predetermined schedule, as well as
affirming and amplifying key messages by strategists and
influencers through likes and shares, thus creating “illusions
of engagement”.

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Community-level Fake Account Operators

At the lowest level of the networked disinformation

hierarchy are community-level fake account
operators.

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 What are the
Possible Solution?

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 There are no possible solution but these
individuals have capacities for agency in the ways
that they translate, execute, or even resist within
the production process. The desire for their own
political, social, and financial gain drives their
complicity and collusion with evil infrastructures,
refusal to be held accountable for the impact of
their actions, and use of moral justifications to
evade responsibility, or indeed, assign it to
others.

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 While our ethnographically inspired approach
begins with an imperative for empathy to
understand the conditions that push people to
engage in precarious disinformation work, we
assign the most culpability here to the chief
architects who are at the top level of influence and
benefit most from the architecture they have built.

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 The argument is that there is no
one-size-fits-all solution to the complex
problem of networked disinformation. While
efforts to blacklist fake news websites, expose
fake accounts, or vilify divisive digital
influencers are well-meaning, these solutions
do not address the underlying causes of the
problem.

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THANK YOU!!!

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