By Nikko A. Balbedina III, Regine Cabato, Giano Libot & Cristina Chi
Edited by Felipe F. Salvosa II
Co-published with PCIJ.org
There were nearly no slow news days in 2025.
The year was a high-pressure firehose of events that left the public scavenging for information. High news demand provided the perfect cover for foreign and domestic actors to plant manipulated narratives online. The goal: to distort public perception of the news.
Journalists found sophisticated machineries of deception across every major national crisis, from the unprecedented International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte and the impeachment of his daughter Vice President Sara Duterte, to the exposure of multi-billion peso flood control scams and a pivotal midterm election.
Here is a breakdown of the year’s defining turning points and how journalists exposed the invisible hands trying to rewrite reality.
China and the West Philippine Sea: The Online Frontline
The battle for the West Philippine Sea was fought on social media as much as the high seas. While Chinese state-backed malign operations have been exposed as early as 2018, similar tactics have increasingly been adopted by domestic actors.
A Philstar.com investigation found a network of pro-Duterte vloggers promoting narratives aligned with China’s strategic interests. The influencers broadcast fear-mongering sentiments framing the Philippines as a weak nation destined for defeat if it continued to challenge China’s maritime expansion.
These vlogs also portrayed the Philippines as a “pawn” of the United States, a common narrative of pro-China foreign information manipulation and interference campaigns documented by journalists and think tanks. Double standards in the criticism of the West, as well as seesawing between downplaying and exaggerating China’s threat, were among the recent themes of pro-China propaganda observed by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ).
In April 2025, new revelations showed how state-linked actors mobilized professional public relations machinery in the Philippines to further embed pro-China narratives among local audiences.
Sen. Francis Tolentino revealed in a Senate hearing that the Chinese embassy in Manila had tapped Makati-based public relations firm InfinitUs Marketing Solutions. A Reuters investigation published in October found that the operation spread narratives that undermined the administration’s foreign policy. According to the report, the network targeted the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement between Manila and Washington, portraying the U.S. military presence as a provocation that jeopardized Philippine safety rather than ensuring it.
READ: How China waged an infowar against U.S. interests in the Philippines
Based on internal documents, Rappler uncovered the operation that managed a massive network of fake accounts posing as working-class Filipinos like teachers, government employees, and construction workers, lending a veneer of grassroots authenticity to pro-Beijing propaganda. The ₱3.7-million operation also weaponized coordinated digital attacks to drown out criticism of Chinese aggression in the West Philippine Sea and systematically erode public resolve regarding Philippine claims.
UniTeam No More: The Marcos-Duterte Rift
As the UniTeam alliance reached its breaking point ahead of the midterm elections, the Duterte and Marcos factions turned against each other.
From late 2024 to mid-2025, PressOne.PH tracked over 200 accounts — many with Chinese names—that smeared President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and bolstered Vice President Sara Duterte. Its most aggressive operation weaponized the debunked “polvoron video,” which falsely showed Marcos using illegal narcotics. Its virality suspiciously coincided with Marcos signing landmark laws protecting maritime zones and sea lanes.
This influence network acted as a digital shield for Duterte. Its coordination peaked during political offensives against the vice president in August and November to drown out corruption allegations, and remained active through June 2025 to buffer investigations into funding misuse in the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education, a cabinet portfolio held by Duterte until 2024.
Duterte supporters attempted to paint Marcos and the liberal opposition as collaborators, coining the term “unipink” to cast Duterte as a victim. Viral AI-generated man-on-the-street interviews, in one instance amplified by Davao City mayor Sebastian Duterte and Sen. Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa, promoted the Dutertes and their political agenda.
Conspiracy thinking emerged as a crucial tool for stabilizing loyalty amid institutional scrutiny. In “Five Ways the Duterte Influence Machine Is Deceiving Filipinos,” the PCIJ found coordinated accounts rapidly circulating claims that impeachment efforts, court rulings, and congressional investigations were part of a vast plot involving the United States “deep state,” local opposition figures, and shadowy elites. By recasting formal democratic processes as covert attacks, these narratives sought to train audiences to interpret legal and political pressure as persecution. These false narratives pre-emptively discredited evidence and institutions, insulating key figures from reputational damage.
On the other side of the fence, tech giant OpenAI revealed in June that its tool ChatGPT was used by a Philippine-based marketing company called Comm&Sense Inc. to mass generate pro-Marcos and anti-Duterte comments that were used on Facebook and TikTok.
Taken together, these patterns point to a well-resourced influence machinery capable of shaping public impressions of elite political rivalries. By the end of the year, sustained propaganda paid off: A recent Pulse Asia survey found trust in Marcos tanking, while trust in Duterte recovered.
Bots, Ballots, and Mindanao Breakaway Buzz
Prior to the 2025 midterms, the National Security Council confirmed in a Senate committee hearing that there were clear “indications” China was interfering in the elections through state-sponsored information operations aimed at bolstering certain candidates.
While the NSC did not publicly name the candidates receiving support from these operations, Assistant Director General Jonathan Malaya said the council had already identified them and was prepared to disclose their names in a closed executive session. In response, Malacañang ordered a formal investigation into the alleged foreign interference, which the Chinese embassy denied.
Another emerging narrative was a contrived campaign for the independence of Mindanao, a likely follow-up to Duterte’s previous suggestion that the island secede from the Philippines. The narrative was amplified by Chinese accounts in 2024 despite being denounced by Mindanao civil society and local officials.
Chinese accounts pounce on Mindanao secession issue to warn of ‘civil war’ in Philippines
Cristina Chi – Philstar.com
In March, PCIJ found a pro-Duterte disinformation campaign distorting the security situation in Mindanao by misrepresenting former separatist groups as organizing behind Duterte. Vera Files also found that claims of civil unrest and war were common on platforms like WeChat and Weibo. Local influencers and anonymous pages later echoed similar narratives.
This disinformation campaign forced the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity to issue statements, followed by similar debunks from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Moro National Liberation Front.
The Digital Siege of the ICC following Duterte’s Arrest
The high profile arrest of Duterte in March occasioned a slew of disinformation. Slightly over 80% of deceptive narratives were favorable to Duterte, Tsek.PH found. Philstar.com mapped some 200 Facebook accounts that participated in a “coordinated message blitz,” copy-pasting cast the arrest as a kidnapping. YouTubers who rode the ICC disinformation wave could earn up to ₱20,000 daily, Rappler calculated.
Disinformation surrounding the ICC did not stop. By October, PressOne.PH found another network of over a hundred TikTok accounts that claimed Duterte’s interim release had been granted. Apart from alleged release, common recurring narratives were false news about Duterte’s death, health, and alleged (mis)treatment under ICC custody. Another trend involved false quotes or invented personalities surrounding judges and other ICC personnel.
Harassment campaigns targeted survivors and victims of the drug war, most notably through an emerging conspiracy theory that the killings were non-existent or exaggerated. One relative received a barrage of harassment after a content creator claiming to be her ex-boyfriend accused her of inventing her brother’s death. Agence France-Presse found the creator, who racked up millions of views, to have used an altered news report.
Rewriting Reality: The Information War That Defined 2025
Narratives seeded today will pay off in the future.
Repetitive, synchronized comments make Duterte-related content most engaged across all ICC Facebook posts
Eight of the top 10 most engaged ICC content were related to the former president.
Coordinated noise: ‘Kangaroo court’ comments flood ICC Facebook page after rejection of Duterte bid for interim release
Kangaroo court? Crocodile court? Tallano Gold?
The court was attacked anew in November after it rejected Duterte’s bid for interim release. Comments calling the ICC a “kangaroo” and “crocodile” court flooded its Facebook comment section, suspiciously racking up thousands of comments within a few hours.
The Muddied Flood Control Corruption Scandal
The Philippines’ largest corruption scandal in history, which implicates officials from the highest halls of power down to regional and local bureaucrats, is muddied by a trend PressOne.PH dubbed “news cycle disinformation.”
The content is a form of propaganda that camouflages as news updates, blurring the lines between professional journalism and attention hacking. This content mimics “breaking news” banners, newsroom fonts, and other visual cues to promote false or imaginary events.
Sen. Rodante Marcoleta emerged as among the beneficiaries of these campaigns on YouTube, while legislators leading the senate inquiry, including senate president Vicente “Tito” Sotto III, were the targets. Neophyte congressman Kiko Barzaga was another beneficiary of sensationalized content, as Rappler found that his “shitposting” tactics racked up a follower growth of 73% in one month alone.
In Depth: Fake ‘breaking news’ on YouTube muddle info on Senate, House power shift amid flood control mess
Showbiz channels were used to distract and distort flood control news, according to a review of over 2,000 TikTok and YouTube videos by PressOne.PH. Astroturfing and flooded comment sections also continue to artificially shape public opinion.
Philstar.com identified a TikTok campaign in which thousands of throwaway comments helped boost more than a dozen AI-generated videos showing false confessions of flood control corruption. The deepfakes featured high-ranking politicians seemingly admitting to their roles in the flood control mess.
By flooding the comment sections of these AI-confessions with repetitive, low-effort engagement, the network tricked TikTok’s algorithm into recognizing the content as “viral.” This artificial surge forced the fabricated confessions into the “For You” feeds of real users, hijacking the public’s sense of reality by making a manufactured lie appear as a trending truth.
The Urgent Battle to Reclaim a Shared Reality
Public concern around disinformation reached a record high of 67%, according to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report — markedly above global and regional averages. Individuals cited political actors as the primary source of misleading information, with social media platforms, especially Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, as the dominant vectors through which false narratives spread.
Trust in news remained fragile, and many Filipinos turned to official government pages, fact-checking sites, or multiple sources in an effort to verify what they saw online. These trends point to the erosion of public confidence in information ecosystems, a crucial backdrop to understanding why misinformation stubbornly sticks to the national consciousness.
In a year as riveting — or chaotic — as 2025, every coordinated campaign has a human target.
Political influence campaigns reshaped how major events of 2025, from impeachment proceedings to foreign policy disputes, were cognitively processed and ultimately remembered by the public. Depending on where you were looking, they smeared some public figures, and propped others up.
From viral fake news on the ICC arrest to flood control scandals, Filipino journalists this year observed what may be the fastest and most overwhelming firehose of falsehoods in public discourse yet. History was revised, if not distorted, not after the fact — but while it happened.
The rise and repetition of conspiracy thinking, from the denialism of extrajudicial killings to claims of U.S. puppeteering Philippine foreign policy, contributed to an illusion of mass belief in fringe ideas. They also localized from global conspiracy tropes, making them familiar and emotionally resonant, while discouraging dissent among hardened political supporters.
Investigating these machineries does not only entail counting fake accounts but also protecting the integrity of the information that shapes our politics. It is an effort to shield the student scrolling through TikTok or the citizen weighing their vote from being a casualty in a war of manufactured consent.
Narratives seeded today will pay off in the future. As disinformation actors recalibrate for a high-stakes 2026 and beyond, the only true defense is a public that uproots the weeds that threaten to take root in public discourse. — PCIJ.org
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