67% of Pinoy netizens view fake news a serious concern

FILE: The survey results then revealed that for a majority of the respondents, fake news is also a serious problem in other media like television, radio, and newspapers (Photo: KC Wong/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

A Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey revealed that 67 percent of adult Filipinos using the internet found fake news as a serious concern.

“Among adult Filipino Internet users, 67% said the fake news problem in the Internet is serious (40% very serious and 26% somewhat serious, correctly rounded), 20% were undecided, and 13% said it is not serious (9% somewhat not serious and 4% not serious at all),” the pollster reported on June 11, 2018, Monday.

SWS added that the perceived seriousness of fake news on the internet is directly related to the frequency of using it.

The survey results then revealed that for a majority of the respondents, fake news is also a serious problem in other media like television, radio, and newspapers.

“The survey found that 60% of adult Filipinos said the problem of fake news in the media was serious (29% very serious, 31% somewhat serious), 27% were undecided, and 13% said it was not serious (7% somewhat not serious, 6% not serious at all), for a net score of +47,” SWS wrote.

With these perceptions of seriousness, a majority also thought that the administration is serious in solving this fake news problem.

According to the findings of SWS, 61 percent said the government was serious in solving the said problem, with 32 percent saying that they are very serious and 30 percent saying that they are somewhat serious. A total of eight percent said the government was not serious, with four percent answering somewhat not serious, and the other four percent answering not serious at all. Thirty-one percent were undecided.

The same survey veiled that the number of adult Filipino internet users increased, reaching 42 percent, according to the latest results.

“This is a point higher than the 41% in June 2017,” SWS added.

The presented results were garnered from the surveys conducted from December 8 to 16 in 2017 and March 23 to 27 this year. SWS used face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adults aged 18 years old and above nationwide, with 300 from Metro Manila, from Balanced Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.