Pinoy Voters’ Vibe: Youth Edition is an initiative of the Ateneo Policy Center (APC) through PARTICIPATE and BOSES Pilipinas that aims to communicate and promote voters’ education and combat misinformation and disinformation among the Filipino Youth. Furthermore, it aims to track the pulse of the Filipino youth and explore relevant issues related to the upcoming 2022 National Elections, particularly by examining the emerging trends that begin to shape these perceptions and views such fake news, new and current media technologies, and political trends, among others.
Out of the targeted twenty-five (25) top vote-rich cities in the Philippines and the capital (Manila), nine (9) cities were successfully reached for the first round of the Pinoy Voters’ Vibe (PVV): Youth Edition Initiative. This was achieved in partnership with eighteen (18) academic institutions from the target cities through the help of university and college administrators, and student governments.
Figure 1: Reach of PVV: Youth Edition Round 1
Under the initiative, a five-minute online survey was disseminated within the partner academic institutions in varying schedules beginning May 17 until June 24, 2021.
As a result, 7,744 students from the partner colleges and universities were able to answer the survey. Most students who answered the fake news quiz, felt that they were confident with their abilities in recognizing fake news — this can be seen in Figure 2, with about 82% of the students indicating that they were somewhat confident or either very confident with recognizing fake news. However, based on Figure 3, we can see that more than half (67%) of the students scored six or below out of the ten-item fake news quiz.
Figure 2: Respondents’ self-rated confidence in identifying fake news
Figure 3: Respondents’ actual fake news score
This paints a troubling picture of a mismatch between the students’ perceived ability in recognizing fake news and their actual performance in the face of fake news. The mismatch could lead to an increased susceptibility to fake news as some students might feel that they would be able to identify fake news correctly, when based on the gathered data — most of them could not.