Chapter 1

THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND

Although the spread of fabricated news may have been around for centuries, their fast and
effective dissemination only became possible by means of a modern technology such as the
internet (Tanveer Khan et al., 2021). Social Media Fake News was always one of the roots of
misinformation since the start of the modern age. It is the main cause of false claims and views,
especially on newly published issues whether social, political, or economical. The alarming
ascend of fake news amount in social media these recent years strikes the most vulnerable
communities, specifically those ones deprived of internet knowledge. Being the fastest and
most dominant spreading outlet of news, with the increasing popularity of a wide variety of
internet-enabled devices and advanced mobile internet speeds, more and more people are
getting involved with social media (Verizon, 2022). This might be dangerous in terms of mass
beliefs due to misconceptions, therefore this research thinks about the challenges and also
some possible immediate actions (eg. fake news detection) to somehow prevent varieties of
wrong dogmas from happening.
According to a study from the past few years, it was found that 8 percent of 25 million Universal
Resource Locator (URLs) posted on social media were indicative of malware, phishing and
scams (Thomas, 2013). In another study (Wong, 2016), it was found that almost 50 percent of
traffic taken from Facebook is fake and hyperpartisan, while at the same time, news publishers
relied on Facebook for 20 percent of their traffic. Recently, the rise of Covid-19 also spiced up
the movement of foul conspiracies throughout social media. Some were alleging that the novel
coronavirus is a human made bio-weapon funded by Bill Gates to increase the selling of
vaccines for business purposes (M. for minds). This Gen-Z type of spreading fake news is
consistently dominating aspects and opinions of the people worldwide, making them too far
distinct from reality. This is so disturbing, that there are some that are too blinded shouting
darkest propagandas as the truth. Many tried to eliminate this mental invasion such as some
fact checking websites (eg. FactCheck.org et al.) but social media is a too strong medium to be
void. Even some known authorities seems to have no power against these fake news, as they
pop up anywhere they would like, developers’ have enough ability to cast massive amount of
them without getting caught, they are indeed masters of digital expertise. However, there are
still people that relies on legitimate and concrete sources in terms of having beliefs on certain
issues mounted at the back of news.
In the vast archipelago of the Philippines, 51% of Filipinos possess difficulties on determining
fake news and approximately 48% of Filipinos can easily spot fake news from social media (SWS
survey, 2021). Among the three major islands, Mindanao is the most, who finds it difficult to
spot fake news, considering that they are too far from the center of economy (Manila,
Philippines), hence lacks of educational support system consequently producing large amount
of undergraduates which are estimated as 59% of those having difficulties about fake news,
this made them the most vulnerable according to the survey. The past 2016 elections in the
Philippines saw a wave of fake news being unleashed—edited photos, spliced videos, and even
replication of legitimate news websites—especially against the rivals of then Davao City local
executive Rodrigo Duterte (Kurt, Inquirer 2022). It is undeniable that the wheels of social media
fake news inflates during every election, twisting statements into a lie, using memes as a
channel for negative campaigning, and even using some well known names randomly just to
promote a candidate. Tiktok is maliciously being used taking over the country as a mainstream
of sources that aren’t even valid, majority are edited fest of video clips to colonize people’s
views neglecting efforts of real journalists. This coming election, the lies expanded even wider
as the majority of Filipinos gave their focus on gadgets during the pandemic, propagandists
grabbed the opportunity to dictate minds through social media such as some persuasive videos
of unrealistic happenings from the past. Luckily, the whole population aren’t too soft to be
fooled by this movements, couple of communities are still awake about the reality of history,
and present times.
Bicol seems to be clean about these as the internet spits less about the region, but it’s totally
not. In fact, there’s a claim recently from YouTube video saying that Bicol contains the highest
Covid cases, citing CNN as the source of it, gathering thousands of likes, though the CNN did
never state such info (Rappler, 2021). Luminous amount of Facebook pages paid to advertise
political assaults are circulating over the region, bursting comment sections’ netizens into anger
even without the presence of valid evidences. Bunch of edited photos are exploding putting
faces of politicians into it without permission and bases, however Bicolanos still critically
believes on that type of mocks which clearly puts the region into its knees.
In the small community of San Jose, Pili, Cam. Sur people are neutrally balanced in handling
fake news based on observations, furthermore, some are already enlightened about issues of
today, but some are still letting lies live in different ways. Sharing facebook posts proving
somethings without contexts, within a use of dummy accounts, convincing relatives to stray
further from facts by the use social media platforms, specifically, the challenges of grade 11
students in San Jose Pili National High School in dealing with these social media fake news
ruining the shine of their future.
Those mention problems above are real and can be seen at present times, social media is a
machine of growing fakenews, producing stigma over the peak of the youth. Grade 11 joseans
hardly deals with this common situation specially this coming elections, the effect of this raging
lies might not be visible today but will absolutely take affect on latter years. This must not be
tolerated for a long period of time, So the researcher decided to conduct a study on how to
eliminate this unacceptable cyber informations trying to dominate grade 11 students of San
Jose Pili National High School.