Despite the breathless coverage given to the matter, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) isn’t looking to regulate social media per se. Campaigning will still be allowed online, and everybody can still post and share political content with practically no restriction. However, this doesn’t mean that the political online environment exists in a complete regulatory vacuum.
While the use of online platforms is mostly free, the fact remains that the degree of interaction with the audience—likes, reposts, etc.—and therefore the effectiveness with which the platform is being used, inevitably depends on what the user shares on those platforms. On social media, content is king. While some of the best content are essentially produced at next to no cost, those success stories are actually few and far between. Inevitably, reliable and consistently good content of the kind that propaganda campaigns need costs money. This places social media use for political purposes squarely within the mandate of the Comelec to monitor campaign spending—specifically in the areas of content production, the use of post-boosting services offered by various social-media platforms, and the use of social-media operatives—more unkindly referred to as “troll farms.” Needless to say, it is on those three areas that the Comelec is turning its sights.
Content production
IF content is king, then the king of content is video. Studies have shown that social-media posts with images or video consistently outperform those posts that have neither. It follows, therefore, that those who want their social-media accounts to pop tend to invest heavily in producing good audio-visual content. In today’s hypercompetitive online world, even amateur bloggers or v-loggers are likely to have equipment that only professionals used to have—things like digital single lens reflex cameras, cardioid condenser microphones, and a staggering range of ring-light sizes. All of which goes to show that the standards for online content have moved way past the old benchmarks. And looking at the content being pushed out, it’s pretty obvious where the money goes.
Boosting
Boosting posts, or paying to have the social-media platform “push” specific posts to a larger number of accounts than would ordinarily see those posts, is a common enough occurrence. Small businesses do it, celebrity fandoms do it, and start-ups swear by it. It is a cost-effective way of getting your message out to a great number of people. As such, it is a natural fit for political campaigns; except that you can probably expect that political campaigns will be boosting posts on an industrial-strength level, compared to your neighborhood florist. In other words, serious money could be invested in boosting a political campaign’s posts; and again, where there’s money being spent, there should be some measure of regulation.
Troll farms
The most contentious aspect of what the Comelec is trying to achieve—and certainly the most difficult—is the monitoring of expenses for the use of social-media keyboard jockeys. How do I even begin describing the challenges inherent in wrangling this fabulous beast? First of all, the job itself is so new there isn’t even a universally accepted job title for it yet. Social-media operator?
Digital operative? Professional commenter? And perhaps most tellingly, hardly anyone—least of all a candidate for public office—will admit to actually using the services of these individuals whose paid-for output largely consists of posting comments on social media. However they’re called, the bottom line is that their employment represents a potentially significant item of expenditure for political campaigns, which must be ripe for regulation.
Surprisingly, despite all of these strategies having been deployed to great effect in the 2016 elections, I have yet to find a single Statement of Contributions and Expenditures from that period reflecting payments made for any of them. Considering that the coming elections will only see an escalation in the use of online campaign materials—not to mention the inevitable improvements in the quality of the content being produced—failing to do anything to remedy that situation strikes me as being incredibly lazy at best.
We’re already seeing how the playing field is being skewed by the failure to close the gaping premature campaigning loophole. And certainly, we must all be painfully aware by now that politicians will take advantage of every kind of unregulated behavior. Then it should be fairly easy to understand that allowing social media to keep on being a hospitable haven for illicit campaign spending is simply unacceptable at this point.
There will be difficulties ahead, of that there can be no question. But it is time to get the Comelec’s feet wet.