Conclusion

As presidential aspirant Leni Robredo campaigned for the 2022 National Elections, her daughters were not spared by disinformation attacks. In this study, we collected, explored, and analyzed tweets that bore false information against the Robredo sisters as the surge of disinformation swept across the social media platform.

It was shown that there are certain events leading to the elections associated with the surge of disinformation. The earliest event happened after Dr. Tricia Robredo tested positive for Covid-19 on December 24, 2021 when she and her family were afterwards accused of violating quarantine protocols. The issue was brought up again in in Twitter in March and April 2022. On April 6, 2022, Jam Magno posted a tweet claiming Tricia Robredo has fallen of a ladder during house-to-house campaign with a photoshopped picture. On April 26, 2022, Jillian Robredo was accused of provoking a man by saying "let me educate you," but it has been reported that no such words were uttered and that Jillian's team were polite at the Baguio Public Market. Lastly, some time in April, now-removed suspicious links implicating Aika and Tricia Robredo to sex scandals has surfaced. Aika was also accused of admitting to the act through a tweet made in 2016 when she participated in protecting the identity of a woman in a sex video viewed by the Congress. It is also important to emphasize again that most of disinformation tweets were posted just one month before the election.

While the disinformation tweets primarily targeted the Robredo sisters, tweets containing disinformation have an associated perspective toward some candidates of the election. Disinformation tweets and non-disinformation tweets are associated with different perceptions toward then presidential aspirant Leni Robredo and Ferdinand Marcos Jr. In particular, about half of the disinformation tweets have a negative sentiment toward Robredo and about a tenth have a positive sentiment toward Marcos. Robredo was never praised by the disinformation tweets while Marcos was never maligned.

It has been found that disinformation tweets are associated with defamation of Robredo during the campaign period. The difference of perceptions of disinformation tweets and non-disinformation tweets toward Robredo is statistically significant.

Recommendations

This research aims to contribute to the body of knowledge regarding disinformation in the digital age. Information and insights revealed by this study may be used in studying disinformation in general. Disinformation tweets collected by the team may be used by other researchers when modeling disinformation.