2018: The year the pro-Duterte social media weakened

BY ANTONIO CONTRERAS      JANUARY 01, 2019

SOCIAL media has been the home of intense political contestations during the first two years of the administration of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte. The period, which began in 2016 during the campaign period until the early part of 2017, saw the strengthening of the social media base of President Duterte. But towards the latter part of 2017, cracks began to appear and intensify, and signs of weakening became more evident in 2018. Rivalries emerged, with bloggers now engaged in competition, pushing some of them to engage in political maneuverings which amounted to replicating the very tactics of traditional politics, albeit now finding expression in the digital world.

At first, political contestations in social media were basically characterized as a war between political colors, between those supporting President Duterte, and those who are critical of him, otherwise labeled as the battle between the “Dutertards” and the “Yellowtards.” However, the sheer dominance of the Duterte brand has enabled the former to take the upper hand to overwhelm the latter. It is in this seemingly victorious world of the “Dutertards,” otherwise known as the DDS, that so-called major bloggers emerged as the epicenter of an attempt to create a hegemonic project not only vis-a-vis the “yellow” opposition, but even among the DDS.

The discourse of the “major bloggers” was thus born. This is the world of powerful social media enablers able to command millions of followers, and a DDS that is now divided between those who are their loyal followers and those who aren’t. And a DDS united in their support for the President was thus divided in their loyalties to the so-called “major bloggers” on one hand, and the so-called independent bloggers on the other.

Michel Foucault has characterized the emergence of discourses on the strength of knowledge as power. In a digital world of social media blogging, knowledge as power is now embedded in a late capitalist enterprise where performative rubrics operate no longer as content, but in terms of numbers of followers, likes and shares. Politics of engagement is no longer seen in the way adversarial discourses of resistance take on the power of the establishment. “Engagement” is no longer a political project of “engaging” power, or speaking truth to power, but has been digitized to become a numerical indicator of how many people are able to react to a particular post, meme, rant or FB live. This is the source of the power of these so-called major bloggers.

And in this world, the casualty may in fact be truth itself. Truth is no longer what we know as fact, but what is produced. Post-truth emerged as a celebration of the meme, the shout-out and the representation that one propagates as part of an agenda to influence politics that valorizes the popular and not the scientific. This has been clearly seen in how major social media bloggers have hijacked, and corrupted, the public imagination on technical issues such as constitutional change, or even the Dengvaxia vaccine. These major bloggers have become the mouthpieces that purports to articulate so-called convenient truths contrary to what experts in the disciplines are saying.

The world of these social media bloggers is one that is constructed on the foundation of simulated truths and representations. On the other hand, President Duterte came to power on the strength of authenticity and his rawness. It is therefore tragic that the measures by which he is now weighed are compromised by inauthenticity, fakery and post-truth manipulations by the very lieutenants that took him in the digital world as one that promised an organically rooted presidency.

What is even more tragic is that the deep divisions among President Duterte’s social media army has rent asunder the very fabric of his digital presence. Fortunately, the organic base of Duterte’s political support goes beyond social media. This is dramatized by what one Duterte functionary has stated in the light of her refusal to intervene in the conflict between the pro-Duterte major social media bloggers and the independent-minded bloggers. She said that there is more to President Duterte than his social media base. This is a counter-narrative to the one brandished by social media, that President Duterte owes his victory to his digital warriors.

One political reality is that while the President remains highly popular, he will soon become a political lame duck. Without the possibility of a reelection, his refusal to extend his term, and his aversion to revolutionary powers, can only but make such phase in his presidency a certainty. What is not certain is whether his popularity will wane, or remains high contrary to what is expected for lame ducks.

A social media ethos that peddles itself through political operators, performing politics to seek not only the monetization of their social media engagements but the translation of this into actual political power, when juxtaposed with this political reality, cannot but translate to a migration of loyalties to possible contenders. This is already apparent in the many social media bloggers who are now beginning to gravitate towards Duterte allies and other political figures in anticipation of the electoral contest in 2019, and later in 2022.

Risks, rough roads and dangerous blindsides abound in the journey ahead, as power now shifts away from the President and into the other political actors. This is a scenario where political alliances and realignments are no longer cobbled on his performance alone, but on how others effectively position themselves in a post-Duterte political landscape. What can be seen as the iron law of any presidency, no matter how popular, is the waning of an episode in a simulated performance, and the anticipation for a new season of politics and emerging political leaders, either actually new or simply rehashed and returning, that has turned politics into one soap opera where the ultimate measure is ratings and engagement, and not platform and performance.

In 2019, we may yet see a radical transformation or realignments in the pro-Duterte social media’s role in the context of the mid-term elections. The engagements of social media enablers appear to have waned. The reign of the powerful DDS bloggers appears to be facing its sunset, even as their political loyalties appear to be shifting, or weakening.

There is always the possibility that the President may defy the law that has applied to lame ducks. His popularity remains high. After all, the President is himself engaged in his own political performance, albeit beyond the confines of social media-mediated simulations of reality. As his social media enablers gravitate toward new patrons during the 2019 elections, and those who will battle each other to become his successor in 2022, he may just indeed be freed from the shackles of performative politics that count on digital engagements, to end up where he has always fought his political battles — in the authentic world of face-to-face politics that has characterized most of his political life as city mayor where he performed at his best.

https://www.manilatimes.net/2018-the-year-the-pro-duterte-social-media-weakened/490254/