Part 2 of 3

It used to be that campaigning for a candidate meant relying on the “holy grail” of tri-media: print (broadsheets, tabloids, magazines), radio, and TV. Traditional media was my expertise — it’s my background.

But the times were changing. As I described in Part 1, when we first tested a possible Duterte candidacy, I was also feeling the pulse of an emerging field: social media, and how it could be used not just to get your message out, but to amplify it.

Social media wasn’t new, of course. But by 2016, one thing in particular had become the game-changer — free Facebook.

Globe had first rolled out free Facebook access back in 2013, and Facebook expanded it through Free Basics in 2015; by the time our campaign was underway, it was everywhere. For a cash-strapped campaign, that was everything. Before free access, a user had to pay a telco for data just to reach his own account and his friends’ feeds. Once that barrier fell, it opened up a world of possibilities — and we decided to tap it.

When the Barrier Fell

During the 2010 elections, Facebook was barely a factor — not yet the force it would become. The game then was simply to rack up as many likes as possible on your pages. But once free access took hold in countries like the Philippines, Facebook turned into a formidable platform for expression.

As much as we were feeling the pulse for Duterte, we were also feeling out what we could do on social media, Facebook especially. There was no rulebook yet — nothing like the conventions of traditional media — so we played everything by ear. And the results, I think, speak for themselves.

That’s not to say Facebook’s rise came without problems. As a new platform, it carried its fair share of challenges and ethical questions: information now moved faster than anyone could check it, and the line between genuine grassroots support and manufactured enthusiasm was already beginning to blur. That’s a topic lengthy enough to deserve its own post down the line. But one thing was clear: on this emerging platform, we had to work out the new rules and strategies as we went.

The Duterte campaign opened the floodgates of what social media could really do — and I was, fortunately (or unfortunately?), right in the middle of it.

Caught in the Middle

Social media became an amplifier — a loudspeaker for every campaign message. Throughout the campaign, our ads ran on traditional media, but they were also carried across Facebook pages, groups, and personal accounts, thus multiplying their reach. The ads we couldn’t afford to run on TV, we simply posted on social media instead.

I was in the middle of everything. Because of my role orchestrating the campaign’s media plan, I became the administrator of numerous Facebook pages, groups, and Messenger chats, actively sharing content about Duterte.

I also sat in on chat groups strategizing tactics and messaging. It was during this stretch that my online network grew a thousand-fold — and with that growth came its own fair share of challenges and issues.

One of them was losing control of the message. A post I wrote for a single page could be copied, reframed, and passed hand to hand across groups I no longer administered — sometimes sharpened into a claim I’d never actually made, and nearly impossible to pull back once it was moving. On social media, the moment something leaves your hands, it stops being yours.

Looking Forward

I’d like to think that, even now, I’m still feeling the pulse of these changing times—a pulse that was just beginning to quicken during that 2016 campaign. Those early experiments weren’t just about winning an election; they were the first tremors of a broader shift in how we communicate, organize, and perceive truth. It’s those deeper, more difficult questions—the ethical toll of the machinery we helped build, and the relentless, faster pulse of the environment we live in today—that I explore in the final part of this series.