A Dictator's Son Wins in the Philippines

This week the Philippine Congress declared Ferdinand Marcos Jr. the winner of the recent election, confirming that he will become the country's next president. Marcos, know by his nickname “Bongbong,” is the son of the late dictator and kleptocrat with the same name, who was president from 1965-1986. Marcos Sr. declared martial law in 1972, a year before his second term was to come to an end, ushering in years of brutality, oppression and poverty in the Philippines. 

To learn more about the role of social media in the rehabilitation of the Marcos brand and to dig a little deeper into the conditions that drive disinformation, I spoke to Dr. Jonathan Corpus Ong, an associate professor of global digital media at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a fellow at Harvard University's Shorenstein Center, and the author of a recent piece in Time magazine, The World Should Be Worried About a Dictator’s Son's Apparent Win in the Philippines. 

Jonathan is also the cohost, with Kat Ventura, of a podcast on the world of troll farms and propaganda in the Philippines called Catch Me If You Can. Check it out.