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Cristina Chi - Philstar.com
January 19, 2026 | 12:17pm
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines shows the same vulnerabilities to foreign information manipulation that Russia exploited in Ukraine, according to a Lithuanian research firm that monitored Moscow's disinformation tactics and influence operations for years.
While an overwhelming number of Filipinos reject Beijing's claims in the South China Sea, the study's main researcher says that has not stopped coordinated campaigns on China-aligned narratives from saturating the country's social media sphere.
Lithuanian data analytics firm RepSense analyzed 287,487 traditional media mentions and 786,691 social media comments between January and October 2025. Nearly half of social media commentary on China-related topics showed signs of coordinated bot activity, according to the study, which it partnered with Philstar.com to present last week.
Comment sections as battleground
Mainstream media remains balanced, said Mykolas Katkus, RepSense co-founder, presenting findings at the virtual briefing.
However, an analysis of comment sections tells a different story. The study found comment sections are "most vulnerable to coordinated interference," with nearly half showing red flags of bot networks, Katkus said.
For instance, the narrative that the Philippines is "Asia's Ukraine" — purportedly because of its close defense ties with the US — garnered 1,802 comments, the highest engagement of any China-aligned narrative tracked by RepSense. South China Sea conflicts came second. "Philippines as U.S. Puppet" narratives ranked third.
These indicate a level of coordinated inauthentic behavior, as "people don't go and post the same comment 500 times, or 50 times," Katkus said. "People don't go and just without reading anything, just post a pre-prepared message before they have even read the article."
Russia's playbook, Philippine context
Katkus has, for years, monitored the patterns of how Russian-aligned narratives spread in Eastern Europe, specifically Lithuania, Poland and Germany.
He said he has spotted the same tactics in the Philippines, only these are adapted to local terrain.
"It's not only a direct comparison of Philippines with Ukraine... but it's also indirect comparisons kind of telling that Philippines is under threat," Katkus said.
Where Moscow pushed "proxy war" narratives in Ukraine, Katkus said China-aligned accounts frame the Philippines as "Asia's Ukraine" or a "U.S. puppet state." Political delegitimization in the Philippines takes the form of painting government as "corrupt, weak, Western-controlled." Algorithm manipulation in social media appears as "engagement-boosted rage bait in comments."
Historical revisionism, a tactic Russia used to justify its actions in Ukraine by denying its sovereignty, appears in the Philippines as narratives that focus on Manila's history with American colonization and supposed continued subjugation to US interests.
Deep polarization of the public plays out in the Philippines as operations that aim to make people choose among nationalism, sovereignty and economic dependency. Genuine policy debates — for instance, on whether the country should prioritize ties with China or alliances with the US — get amplified into irreconcilable camps with no possible consensus.
"Almost each of these checkboxes, it checks for Philippines," Katkus said. "It also checks for many countries that are on the crossroads of foreign political power."
The Moldova warning
Katkus offered one example that shows the possible scale of foreign interference in the Philippines and the role that platforms play in regulating content.
During Moldova's recent election last year, TikTok removed over 100,000 fake accounts that churned out narratives in favor of pro-Russian politicians.
"TikTok took out 100,000. Moldova is a country of 2.5 million people and there was 100,000 TikTok accounts which were removed in one day. They knew what to remove," Katkus said.
The Philippines has a population of over 110 million people and the highest social media usage rate in the world at 89% of the population.
"Can you realize how many such accounts there are in the Philippines? I find it very difficult to believe that the platforms don't know about the existence of such accounts," Katkus said.
Amid attempts to seed information chaos among Filipinos — bombarding them with similar narratives in a short span of time — RepSense offers four policy recommendations:
- Treat narrative patterns as early-warning signals and integrate narrative monitoring into national security planning;
- Build narrative literacy, not just media literacy, to help people recognize propaganda rather than just evaluate information;
- Coordinate with countries that faced Russian operations to apply lessons from the Baltics and Ukraine;
- And promote citizen fact-checking using proven practices.
