Politics and Profit in the Fake News Factory: Four Work Models of Political Trolling in the Philippines

This report synthesises findings based on over three years of ethnographic research, during which we gained unprecedented access to authors of fake news and producers of disinformation campaigns who provided long-form interviews. The main aim of this report is to shed light on the variety of work arrangements of digital political trolling that continue to hide in plain sight.

We concentrate on three organisational models of disinformation production we observed in our research, namely 1) the in-house staff model, 2) the advertising and PR model, and 3) the clickbait model. We also reference the features of a fourth model of disinformation production—the state-sponsored model of disinformation—drawing on secondary data from journalistic investigative reports on digital campaigns used to promote state policy, delegitimise dissenters, and attack opposition figures.