Screens, and Struggles
In less than a few weeks, Filipinos cast their votes for this year’s 2025 elections. Looking at the roster of choices for the Senate, a familiar pattern has emerged: the same powerful names are back on the ballot, and once again, they’re using digital media not to broaden democracy, but to tighten their grip on power.
Since 2016, social media has become the front line of political influence in the country. With millions of Filipinos relying on Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube for news and community.
While the performance of elections still has town halls and motorcades, the battle online is fought even way before the election cycle.
Today’s Political Elites have learned to use social media with ruthless efficiency. They flood newsfeeds with videos, orchestrated outrage, and nostalgic storytelling. Unfortunately, the goal isn’t to be informed. It’s to overwhelm the audiences, to make their version of reality louder and more viral than the rest.
Politicians, and their influencers don’t just spread propaganda. They exploit pain. They tap into deep social and economic struggles like rising food prices, job insecurity, and generational poverty, while offering no plan for structural reform. Only a strategy to maintain control.
For example, the latest appeal has been to just vote on political allegiances rather than actual plans. We’ve simplified elections to Team Red versus Team Green, and it’s such a disaster.
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Since 2016, various political campaigns have turned discontent into a weapon to seize control. Charisma beats competence, and spectacle often defeats substance.
And although there have been a lot of efforts to improve safety in various social media platforms, there is something still inherently wrong with how algorithms reward emotion over accuracy.
How profitable controversy is online, and politicians have seen these, they’ve used this to expose our fears and inflate their legitimacy.
What we have these days is probably the shallowest version of our democracy. We have elections, yes. But the choices feel increasingly artificial.
Political parties are weak, platforms are vaguer than ever, and candidates often come from the same set of surnames. Their rise has drowned out alternatives for anyone to even consider.
For ordinary Filipinos, this can feel like a trap. Many are genuinely angry at inequality and corruption. But the politicians who tap into that anger rarely intend to fix its root causes. Instead, they use that energy to win, then govern in ways that preserve the status quo.
Democracy is not just about voting. It’s about making informed choices, and right now, the information environment does not genuinely allow it. This isn’t just a local problem. It’s a global condition that a nation’s destiny has fallen further away from its people, especially in fragile democracies like ours.
There was a time where the Philippines was praised for its vibrant democracy. Today many of us believe in its depreciation. Maybe that’s why we flirt with the ideas of dictatorship in this country as the only fix.
