Literacy, National Identity, and Affective Economies in the 2022 Philippine Presidential Election.

After the 2016 Philippine presidential election, Facebook's Public Policy Director for Global Elections labeled the Philippines as "Patient Zero" in the war on disinformation. Despite this stark warning, things had not changed by the next election. In 2022 Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr., was elected president amidst widespread accounts that his campaign engaged in online disinformation and historical distortion about Philippine history, specifically the martial law period. Through appeals to national identity, Marcos mobilized deep emotional attachments, and the ability of these messages to circulate on social media illustrated what Sara Ahmed has called an "affective economy." By looking at the way affect circulated on social media during the 2022 election, this paper will explore how addressing disinformation requires understanding social media's ability to capitalize on emotion. Furthermore, this paper argues that effective media and information literacy campaigns need to interrogate the colonial roots of social media's affective economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]