Tag Archives: Mocha Uson

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Two Mochas too many

Here’s the thing with having someone like Mocha Uson as Asec of the Presidential Communications Operations Office: she has no business being there.

I ignored her for much of the time she was spewing hate and vitriol during the campaign of 2016, but the moment she became a government official, there became no reason to ignore her, because public funds pay for her salary, for her trips, for whatever it is she’s doing on social media which is necessarily on behalf of and in connection to the PCOO and government.

And here is where Senator Nancy Binay was correct: there is no clear or real or tenable divide between Mocha on her FB account and Mocha the Assistant Secretary. Communications Secretary Martin Andanar of course insists otherwise, saying that Mocha’s disclaimer on her page is enough for us all to acknowledge this separation between the two Mochas. He also brings in an illusory debate: (more…)

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Mocha and the end of troll discourse

If there’s anything the past week has revealed it’s the slow death of troll discourse. It’s entirely possible the social media armies aren’t being paid enough, but it’s also possible that we just have ceased to be afraid of being bullied online. The latter is my more optimistic perspective, because it’s been a year after all, and now more than ever, this government’s strategies of silencing and skewing discourse have been exposed to be nothing more than bad communications and terrible damage control.

The only reason it requires mention at this point in fact, is the existence of one Mocha Uson, whose behavior has not evolved from being rabid Duterte supporter during the campaign to being a government employee whose salary is being paid for by public funds. The latter behooves us all to critique her and her actions — as we should all government officials, especially when they continue to be a source not just of falsity and hate, but also — and more importantly — the most terrible kind of propaganda that justifies the killings of thousands.  (more…)

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#Andanar’s learning curve, social media user accreditation, #PCOO’s downward spiral

It seems the learning curve is steep for Martin Andanar — and everyone else on the Duterte communications team. A year in, and this week’s mistakes and mishaps can only be symptoms of the bigger crisis that is Presidential and government communications. We are also reminded (yet again!) that we are wasting public funds on the salaries of officials who have no idea what they’re doing.

After a year, instead of actually evolving in his knowledge of social media, Andanar is still stuck on his simpleton assessment of what social media is about. He’s still working with the nonsense of counting followers like it matters. Department Order 15, which seeks to accredit “social media practitioners” to cover PCOO and Presidential events even asserts that social media is where “the citizenry” might be “engaged” in order to “enrich the quality of discourse.”

Was Andanar in the Philippines the past year? At what point did partisan social media (that is, pro-Duterte and pro-Dilawan) “enrich the quality of discourse”?

(more…)

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Andanar sa PCO: Isang kasaysayan ng kapalpakan (2)

When 2017 started, Martin Andanar was on his seventh month in the Presidential Communications Office (PCO).

The Communications secretary wanted to welcome the year with a bang, so he decided to listen to pro-government troll discourse and be afraid of a yahoogroup. You got that right. A yahoogroup. In the year 2017. For what to him was a “national issue” involving the names of Filipinos in America and a staff member of VP Leni’s office, in purported conversation that was not only using a yahoogroup in the time of Viber and Telegram, but also apparently, a yahoogroup that could so easily be accessed or hacked.

This piece of “news” about a destabilization plot came from what we now know to be fake news sources, as fueled by pro-Duterte troll discourse. It is decidedly blind, it is fiction-writing based on the flimsiest of sources if not totally without basis. And the Communications Secretary was believing it, hook line sinker.  (more…)

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Ressa, Mocha, Fake News

The Canada Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) News website came out with an interesting piece about the state of discourse in the Philippines given mainstream media on the one hand, and the rise of fake news as propaganda on the other. Written by Senior Correspondent Adrienne Arsenault, it had as headline a quote from Rappler’s Maria Ressa, saying that “Democracy as we know it is dead,” which first made me imagine that the article was going to talk about the urgent concerns of summary executions on the streets and drug-related deaths, or the continued control by big business, oligarchs, and feudal lords over government despite a President who seems to stand squarely for the people (if / when his pronouncements hold and given his pro-people appointees), or even just the continued verbal assault against free speech from the President and his men.

Instead Ressa – and this article – were referring to the death of democracy … in relation to fake news and people like Mocha.

Yes, I’m as stunned as you are. (more…)