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‘Golden age’: Marcos myths on Philippine social media

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Philippine social media has exploded with support for presidential election favourite Ferdinand Marcos Junior

Philippine social media has exploded with support for presidential election favourite Ferdinand Marcos Junior – Copyright AFP Jam STA ROSA

Ferdinand Marcos Junior appears on the cusp of victory in next week’s presidential polls, with his seemingly unassailable lead fuelled by a decades-long misinformation campaign to revamp the family brand.

The clan’s comeback from pariahs in exile to the peak of political power has been built on a relentless barrage of fake and misleading posts on social media.

Pro-Marcos pages have sought to rewrite the family’s history, spreading fallacies about everything from the patriarch’s dictatorship to court rulings about the billions of dollars stolen from state coffers.

AFP’s Fact Check team has debunked many of the myths swirling around the Marcoses.

Here are five of the most shared:

– Assassination attempt –

An alleged attempt to kill Marcos Jr ignited social media at the beginning of February, days before the presidential election campaign season kicked off.

A video posted on a Facebook account named Anti bias, which has repeatedly attacked Marcos Jr’s main rival Leni Robredo and her opposition party, showed a news report about a bullet hole in a window of Marcos Jr’s office.

It was viewed more than three million times.

But AFP fact-checkers found the video was more than six years old.

It had been taken from a news report published by GMA News on its social media accounts in August 2015 when Marcos Jr was a senator.

– Ignored by the media –

On the presidential campaign trail, Marcos Jr has shunned most media interviews and largely ignored journalist questions at rallies.

Yet multiple posts swarming social media claim he is the one being ignored.

A video posted on YouTube on March 16 asserted that Marcos Jr’s rally in the northern province of Nueva Ecija was “not covered by the media”.

The clip was viewed more than 23,000 times after it was posted by a YouTube channel called Showbiz Fanaticz, which has a history of peddling election-related misinformation.

But the reality was very different.

Local broadcaster ABS-CBN and other news outlets including News5 and OnePH published video reports of the rally.

Another video posted on the Facebook page Para sa Pagbabago showed Marcos Jr speaking in 2014 about rebuilding efforts following Super Typhoon Haiyan.

It was shared 12,000 times and viewed 555,000 times, with many users commenting that the interview was not broadcast by the media.

But AFP fact-checkers found various news outlets had aired portions of the interview while other organisations produced reports based on his remarks.

– Golden age –

Pro-Marcos pages have long sought to portray Ferdinand Marcos’s dictatorship as a “golden age” of peace and prosperity, rather than a violent and corrupt regime that left the country impoverished.

One claim that the Philippines was the second-richest country after Japan during the Marcos regime was posted in March 2020 on the Facebook page DU30 MEDIA Network, which pretends to be a legitimate media outlet.

It was shared about 300 times.

AFP fact-checkers consulted experts who said the economic data from the Marcos years told a very different story.

Philippine gross domestic product actually went from being fifth in Asia at the start of the dictator’s rule to sixth by 1985, as the country languished in a deep recession.

Another post on the Facebook page Bangon Bansang Maharlika in October 2020 claimed the elder Marcos and Filipino nationalist Jose Rizal set up the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

It was shared nearly a hundred times.

Both institutions were created in 1944, five decades after Rizal’s death and 20 years before Marcos was elected president of the Philippines.

– No plunder –

The Philippines’ highest court said in 2003 that the legitimate income of Marcos and his flamboyant wife Imelda during their 20 years in power was $304,372.43.

Yet more than $658 million was found in their Swiss bank accounts, which the court ordered to be handed back to the government.

It was a fraction of the $10 billion estimated to have been plundered from state coffer during the regime.

But a Facebook account named Ghee Vin Walker posted a claim in 2018 that no court had ever ruled the Marcoses had stolen money from the treasury.

It was shared nearly 9,000 times.

Many Filipinos have been deceived into believing Marcos made his wealth when he was a lawyer, before becoming president.

One such claim posted on the Facebook page Gabs TV in September 2020 asserted Marcos received a massive gold payment from a client in 1949.

– Abuses downplayed –

A misleading video posted on Facebook during the 2022 election campaign sought to downplay human rights abuses committed during the Marcos years.

Amnesty International estimates Marcos’s security forces either killed, tortured, sexually abused, mutilated or arbitrarily detained about 70,000 opponents.

But the video shows the elder Marcos alleging the rights group did not visit the Philippines and had relied on “hearsay” in its reports about the abuses during his dictatorship.

It was shared more than 3,000 times and viewed 184,000 times.

Multiple historical accounts indicate Amnesty International visited the Philippines at least twice during the Marcos presidency.

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Merriam-Webster’s 2023 Word of the Year

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Merriam-Webster's 2023 Word of the Year

The wordsmiths over at Merriam-Webster have announced their official “Word of the Year for 2023,” they say it’s something we are “thinking about, writing about, aspiring to, and judging more” than ever.

The word is authentic.

According to the dictionary, the most common definitions of authentic are “not false or imitation,” “being true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character,” and “worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact.”

Merriam-Webster says the word saw a “substantial increase” in lookups this year. That’s probably because we now live in a world where artificial intelligence, deepfake technology and questionable memes challenge our basic notions of reality.


Authenticity is also seen as a commodity at a time when influencers build their brands on social media while attempting to seamlessly pitch their “favorite” products. These days, the average person scrolls through over 43 feet of content every day on social media. After being exposed to countless images of people, it becomes easier to spot the phonies from those who are being their authentic selves.

“When we look at common threads across the thousands of influencer marketing campaigns we’ve run at The Outloud Group over the last 15 years, the similarity between all of our best-performing brand creator partnerships is pretty simple: true authenticity,” Bradley Hoos, CEO of The Outland Group, a full-service influencer marketing agency, writes in Forbes.

Merriam-Webster adds that authenticity is a trait people strove to find for themselves in 2023.

“Celebrities like singers Lainey Wilson, Sam Smith, and especially Taylor Swift all made headlines in 2023 with statements about seeking their ‘authentic voice’ and ‘authentic self,” Merriam-Webster writes. “Headlines like Three Ways To Tap Into Taylor Swift’s Authenticity And Build An Eras-Like Workplace associate this quality with pop-culture superpower.”

The dictionary also highlighted more words that trended in 2023, including:

“Rizz” — Internet slang for “romantic appeal or charm” (noun) or “to charm, seduce” (verb), popularized by YouTuber Kai Cenat, was added to the dictionary.

“Deepfake” — Altered images or recordings that convincingly misrepresent someone’s actions or words, making it hard to distinguish between real and fake.

“Coronation” — The crowning of a new British monarch, King Charles III, sent people to the dictionary’s website to learn the term’s meaning.

“Dystopian” — In 2023, “dystopian” was a verb applied to many frightening real-world issues and was used to describe the trend in video games, books and movies depicting a dark future.

“EGOT” — Lookups for “EGOT” spiked in February when Viola Davis won a Grammy for the audiobook version of her memoir. That made her one of the 18 people to become an EGOT, or winner of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards.

“X” — When Twitter was rebranded as X on July 23, searches for the term spiked at Merriam-Webster.com, where curious people went to discover more about the mysterious letter.

“Implode” — When a submersible that went to visit the remains of the Titanic in June imploded, the term had a considerable spike as people attempted to learn more about the passengers’ fate.

“Doppelgänger” — This term got hot multiple times in 2023. It trended twice due to stories out of Germany and New York involving the attempted murder or suicide of someone’s lookalike. Further, September saw the release of Naomi Klein’s book, “Doppelgänger: A Trip Into the Mirror World.”



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X Experiments with New Grok AI Access Buttons In-Stream

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X Experiments with New Grok AI Access Buttons In-Stream

I’m not sure that X’s “Grok” AI chatbot is ever going to become a major element of the in-app experience. But owner Elon Musk has invested a lot into the new tool, so soon, it’ll be added to a lot more surfaces in the app, as X looks to make it a bigger enticement to get more subscribers to its X Premium+ subscription offering.

Last week, Musk noted that, soon, Grok would be available to analyze X posts in-stream.

In order to facilitate this, X is now looking to add a new Grok button to the lower function bar in the app, seemingly, at this stage a least, replacing the current Communities shortcut.

As you can see in this example, posted by X News Daily, a new Grok button may soon be displayed in prominent position, right in the middle of the bottom tray. Which would then make it easier to consult Grok for analysis of content, or potentially to assist in post creation, while there’s also another Grok tab in the sidebar, providing alternative access.

Grok chatbot

All of this is still in flux, as X works out the best placement for the option. But one way or another, Grok is coming to the main X UI, which could see a lot more content being pumped out by Elon’s sarcasm-focused AI bot, which is trained on real-time X conversation and data.

Though, presumably, access will remain limited.

Right now, Grok is only available to selected users who have subscribed to X’s highest-priced “X Premium+” monthly subscription package, which currently costs $US16 per month. X is rolling out Grok access to Premium+ subscribers based on when they signed up to the program, as it gradually expands the presence of its AI chatbot tool.

You would assume, then, that these new buttons and Grok analysis options will only be made available to those who are paying a premium for the app, though whether that’s actually worth the $US168 a year (annual plan) to gain access is another question.

But then again, millions of people have signed up to ChatGPT, and Elon seems confident that Grok will be as good, if not better than that. And in that sense, maybe Grok will prove to be a winner, which could then help X to maximize its subscription revenue intake, and broaden its income streams.

It’s impossible to say, because Grok is only in limited access, and as such, there’s not a lot of insight as to its potential value, or not, as yet.

But Elon wants to ensure that there remains a generative AI option that’s not biased, and not censored, a market gap that he believes Grok can fill. And again, given his investment in the required technology (Elon reportedly spent “tens of millions of dollars” on GPUs for his alternative AI project), he’ll also be looking to glean some return on that outlay, which will likely see X looking to make as big a push on Grok as it can to maximize interest.

Whether that’s a positive or negative, we’ll soon find out.



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Beyond the buzz: Blue Tick’s formula for social media success

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Beyond the buzz: Blue Tick's formula for social media success

Photo courtesy of Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels

Opinions expressed by Digital Journal contributors are their own.

Breaking through the constant clamor of the social media world is no easy feat. With the world more interconnected than ever, attention isn’t just a valuable commodity, it’s the currency brands and marketers trade in. This bustling digital bazaar has brands tripping over themselves to capture even a fleeting glance from consumers, and while some do it successfully, many often fail. Blue Tick Ltd is one of the pioneering brands that understand the rhythm and flow of the online attention economy.

Under the dynamic leadership of its founder, Dylan, Blue Tick doesn’t chase attention — it commands it. A community marketing expert with wide-ranging expertise, Dylan has always had a keen eye for what works. Thanks to his fascination with the nuances of social media strategies and consumer engagement, he proudly holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing communications and a master’s degree in digital marketing. That fascination was also the catalyst for Blue Tick, an enterprise that reimagines the connection between brands and their communities.

“In school, I led several successful social media campaigns that not only increased engagement with campus events but also brought significant online attention to my academic community,” Dylan recalls. “After graduating, I founded a community marketing company called Blue Tick.” This community doesn’t merely aim to increase visibility but strives to forge a bond with audiences through authenticity and innovation. Unlike traditional advertising, community marketing is about creating a living, breathing ecosystem around a brand.

At Blue Tick, the focus isn’t on broadcasting messages but on creating dialogues, recognizing that a personalized touch can turn a passive observer into an active participant and brand advocate. In a digital terrain where every brand is a storyteller, Blue Tick’s narrative is distinct. It isn’t about adding more noise; it’s about fine-tuning the message to reach the right ears. Their approach is both an art and a science, melding creative content with a laser-focused targeting system backed by robust data analytics.

“My work has proven that combining creative content with precise targeting can create impactful online experiences,” Dylan explains. Blue Tick’s marketing campaigns aren’t just seen but felt. The content they create isn’t just encountered by consumers; they experience it. As Dylan explains, “Our campaigns are more than just text and images; we also include interactive content, gamified elements, and storytelling that make the brand more vivid and interesting and stand out in the busy world of social media.” Every campaign they roll out isn’t just a series of ads; they’re the opening lines to a conversation that makes every single person feel seen and heard.

Data-driven decision-making is another of Blue Tick Ltd’s pillars. The company meticulously analyzes consumer data to understand preferences, behaviors, and trends. This insight allows them to craft marketing strategies that are not only creative but also incredibly targeted. “The content I receive is more relevant, making me more likely to pay attention, share, or make a purchase,” says one consumer, highlighting the impact of Blue Tick’s data-driven strategies.

Over the years, Dylan’s team hasn’t just understood the landscape of social media marketing; they have redefined it. As their success proves, community marketing succeeds because consumers become brand ambassadors who not only love the products but also feel a deep connection to the brand’s ethos. With Blue Tick, it’s clear that the future of marketing is not just about reaching audiences; it’s about speaking directly to the consumer’s heart, turning every campaign into a conversation, and every consumer into a community member.

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