1,500 socmed accounts covertly involved in 2022 polls – UP study

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January 29, 2026 | 12:00am

MANILA, Philippines —  A study conducted by experts from the University of the Philippines and other foreign universities found that at least 1,500 social media influencer accounts were involved in covert or under-the-radar campaigning during the 2022 general elections.

The report released by the UP Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs was authored by Fatima Gaw of Northwestern University, Jon Benedik Bunquin of the University of Oregon and UP Diliman, Jose Mari Lanuza of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and UP Manila, Samuel Cabbuag of the Hong Kong Baptist University and UP Diliman; Noreen Sapalo of UP Diliman and Al-Habbyel Yusoph of Bocconi University.

The authors said the study estimated the number of social media influencers on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube and the amount of money spent on them during the 2022 presidential elections.

“We used an interdisciplinary approach combining qualitative social science research, computational methods and economic modeling. Our close and in-depth examination of social media channels and interviews with influencers, campaign managers and staff and political and advertising consultants revealed a high demand for influencers to campaign for political candidates,” the authors said.

The authors added that through computational methods, they identified 1,425 influencer accounts across the four platforms that were engaging in covert or under-the-radar ways of campaigning for politicians on their channels.

They added that through economic modeling, it was estimated that at least $27 million was spent on influencers, if they were paid per post online under the pay-per-post compensation model, or $10.9 million if influencers were commissioned within a specific time period and paid a fixed price under the retainer model.

“Our work also serves as a model for election research and policy that can be employed to examine online political campaigns in different contexts,” the authors added.

The authors said the study presented a conceptual and methodological framework for defining the boundaries of the constantly evolving field of political campaigns, with influencers as exemplary covert political campaigners.

They added that the research built on early research that focuses on political influencers and the mediatization of politics.

The authors said a critical contribution of the research is its interdisciplinary methodology that integrates qualitative social science and computational communication methods, which is uncommon in communication research.

“Our contribution also extends its empirical utility using economic modeling. This article serves as a model for both election research and election policy by providing a modular framework that addresses gaps in knowledge about the scope, scale and cost of covert influence operations specific to each country or regional context,” the authors said.

The research said that of the 1,425 influencer accounts across four social media platforms engaging in covert political campaigning, about three percent of the total influencer accounts were subjected to the 18 multi-dimensional index.

“Given platform-specific thresholds, most of these influencers are on YouTube (584) and TikTok (544), followed by Facebook (207) and Twitter (89). Notably, TikTok had the least number of influencer accounts posting election-related content but almost 13 percent are deemed to be involved in covert political campaigning. In contrast, Facebook had the most number of influencer accounts talking about the elections but only about one percent present evidence of anomalous campaign activities,” the authors said.
The study said the influencer-campaigner accounts vary in their participation in covert political campaigns across the three dimensions of analysis and the platforms.

“The network indicators imply that the influencers leveraged networked affordances to partake in coordinated campaigns. YouTube influencers’ high eigenvector centrality and strong edge weight with mainstream channels suggest that they publish on a variety of election and political topics and as a result, are recommended together with prestige channels (i.e. news media, politicians). TikTok influencers coordinate their campaign through partisan hashtags exemplified by their high degree centrality, led by the most popular accounts with high eigenvector centrality,” the study said.
The authors said the wide distribution is the main strategy of Facebook influencers, with some connected to disinformation communities.
“Twitter influencers score high in its co-tweet network, implying the use of retweets and quote tweets within a narrow window of time to promote their candidates’ political agenda. Only Facebook and YouTube influencers displayed outlier behavioral characteristics,” the study said.
It said Facebook influencers engage in coordinated link sharing and post recurrence, indicating that they not only tend to share the same links but also the same scripts in their campaign posts.