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To nuance current understandings of the proliferation of digital disinformation, this article seeks to develop an approach that emphasizes the imaginative dimension of this communication phenomenon. Anchored on ideas about the sociality of communication, this piece conceptualizes how fake news and political trolling online work in relation to particular shared understandings people have of their socio-political landscape. It offers the possibility of expanding the information-oriented approach to communication taken by many journalistic interventions against digital disinformation. It particularly opens up alternatives to the problematic strategy of challenging social media manipulation solely by doubling down on objectivity and facts.

Many current counter-disinformation initiatives focus on addressing the production or 'supply side' of digital disinformation. Less attention tends to be paid to the consumption or the intended audiences of disinformation campaigns. A central concept in understanding people's consumption of and vulnerability to digital disinformation is its imaginative dimension as a communication act. Key to the power of disinformation campaigns is their ability to connect to people's shared imaginaries. Consequently, counter-disinformation initiatives also need to attend to these imaginaries.This report examines why the precarious middle class in the Philippines has been particularly susceptible to digital disinformation. It focuses on two key imaginaries that disinformation producers weaponized in the year leading up to the 2022 national elections. The first was a long-simmering anti-Chinese resentment, which racist social media campaigns about Philippines-China relations targeted. The other was a yearning for a 'strong leader', which history-distorting campaigns about the country's Martial Law era amplified. Ironically, some practices adopted by members of the public to protect themselves from the toxicity and vitriol of online spaces increased their vulnerability to digital disinformation. The cumulative impact of these was for people to dig deeper into their existing imaginaries, something that disinformation producers targeted and exploited.To establish a similarly robust common ground of reality, counter-disinformation initiatives should themselves be programmatic, not ad hoc.

The field of disinformation studies remains relatively silent about questions of identity, motivation, labor, and morality. Drawing from a one-year ethnographic study of disinformation producers employed in digital black ops campaigns in the Philippines, this article proposes that approaches from production studies can address gaps in disinformation research. We argue that approaching disinformation as a culture of production opens inquiry into the social conditions that entice people to this work and the creative industry practices that normalize fake news as a side gig. This article critically reflects on the methodological risks and opportunities of ethnographic research that subverts expectations of the exceptionally villainous troll and instead uses narratives of creative workers' complicity and collusion to advance holistic social critique and local-level disinformation interventions.

The field of disinformation studies remains relatively silent about questions of identity, motivation, labor, and morality. Drawing from a one-year ethnographic study of disinformation producers employed in digital black ops campaigns in the Philippines, this article proposes that approaches from production studies can address gaps in disinformation research. We argue that approaching disinformation as a culture of production opens inquiry into the social conditions that entice people to this work and the creative industry practices that normalize fake news as a side gig. This article critically reflects on the methodological risks and opportunities of ethnographic research that subverts expectations of the exceptionally villainous troll and instead uses narratives of creative workers' complicity and collusion to advance holistic social critique and local-level disinformation interventions.

No technology has been weaponized at such an unprecedented global scale as social media. Diverse research approaches now attempt to decipher how laptop screens and smartphones around the world are used to manipulate public debate, hijack mainstream media agenda, and influence political agendas. In this report, we: Narrate "deep stories" of individual workers positioned at different levels of the hierarchy, not to vilify them but to understand their motivations and social backgrounds. Discuss the labor arrangements that underpin networked disinformation in order to reveal the vulnerabilities of professional industries and institutions to political deception work. Discuss the persuasive techniques that architects of networked disinformation deploy in mobilizing populist sentiment to further clients' elite agendas and for their own economic and political gain. List preliminary recommendations aimed at every level of fake news production's hierarchical structure.

Introduction -- Section I: Mobile media in East/Southeast Asia - Intimate relationships and friendships -- Section II: An examination of mobile media - The changing definitions of East/Southeast Asian families -- Section III: Mobile media and the East/Southeast Asian experience - Neighbourliness and community -- Conclusion.

Abstract
This article contributes to the intensifying calls to globalize and decolonize the field of media and communication by broadening the possibilities for digital media research. To do so, it takes a deep dive into a set of 27 works on digital media from five Philippine-based journals, all of which were published during the COVID-19 years of 2020–2023. Collectively, they spotlight the entanglements of technologies with the distinct and diverse political, economic, and socio-cultural realities outside the West. Through a qualitative thematic analysis, our article identifies how the different works in our selected set are clustered along three key themes: on digital deliberations, digital intimacies, and digital promotion. There were a few of them that did not align with these themes, but nevertheless also indicated emerging vectors from which to see the entwinement of digital media with the dynamics of Philippine society. All these present expanded lines of theorizing research about digital media that connect with but, importantly, also go beyond the typical concerns of scholarship generated in the West.