Perspectives: Asia - Can deliberation bridge divided publics? A hopeful story from the Philippines 

Have social media users in the Philippines lost their free will to disinformation, or are they willingly complicit in spreading false narratives online? In this presentation, Professor Nicole Curato provides a hopeful pathway to break free from narrow and damaging portrayals of social media users in a country often described as the ‘patient zero of the global disinformation epidemic.’
Drawing on a decade of academic research on democratic innovations in the Philippines, she identifies plausible projects that can transform the public sphere at a time of authoritarian nostalgia, impunity, influence operations, and information disorder.