By Christopher Balagtas
Center for Information Resilience and Integrity Studies (CIRIS)
Part 1: How a Tragedy Becomes a Disinformation Field Test
The deaths of Rene Baterbonia and Divine Adili are tragic. Their families deserve answers, their friends deserve space to grieve, and the public deserves facts. What they do not deserve is to see this tragedy turned into content by trolls, partisan influencers, anonymous pages, or political actors chasing clicks, clout, or power.
Over the past weeks, a growing number of hyperpartisan vloggers, anonymous profiles, and suspicious pages have latched onto the case. Many have no evident connection to the victims, the school, or their communities, yet they push the story aggressively. Some have even inserted divisive narratives like “Mindanao versus Manila” into what should remain a fact driven search for truth and accountability.
When personalities, profiles, and pages that normally focus on unrelated political fights suddenly pivot to this case and post about little else, we should pay attention. When their language, timing, and targets start to look synchronized, we should be more concerned. One working hypothesis is uncomfortable but necessary: we may be watching a disinformation field test in real time.
Before soldiers are sent into battle, commanders conduct exercises to test equipment, communications, and tactics. They observe what works, identify weaknesses, and refine the playbook before larger operations. Information operations can work the same way. Malign actors do not always begin with elections, geopolitics, or the West Philippine Sea. Sometimes, they look for a story emotional enough to guarantee engagement but local enough to avoid sustained scrutiny.
They then watch what individuals and networks do with that story. Which posts travel, and which die quietly? Which personalities gain the most views, followers, or donations? Which messages trigger anger, fear, or distrust? How quickly can a narrative jump from one community to another? How much coordination is needed to dominate feeds? Who will push the harshest claim, and who will retreat when challenged?
In this phase, the primary goal is often not to persuade people of one specific claim. The goal is data: testing tactics, techniques, and procedures, mapping vulnerabilities, and measuring how resilient or fragile an information ecosystem is. For operators, every post, comment, share, deletion, and backlash becomes feedback. The tragedy becomes an instrument panel.
The DISARM Framework, a global model used to study manipulation campaigns, describes this kind of behavior as “Trial Content.” Operators seed content, monitor performance, adjust messaging, and learn what works before applying those lessons to bigger campaigns. A nonpolitical or local controversy can be perfect because fewer institutions are watching closely in the first hours.
That is why the sudden interest of some influencers and political pages in Rene and Divine’s deaths matters. The issue is not that citizens are grieving or demanding answers. They should. The issue is when actors with established partisan audiences appear to treat grief as raw material, converting pain into outrage, outrage into traffic, and traffic into influence.
This tactic is not new. In 2014, a sophisticated hoax falsely claimed that a chemical plant in Louisiana had exploded. The campaign reportedly used bots, doctored screenshots, cloned news sites, and fake text alerts to simulate panic and test whether online manipulation could generate real world fear. In 2015, Russian linked actors reportedly pushed a fake story about contaminated Thanksgiving turkeys, another rehearsal before larger election operations.
East Asia offers another warning. During Typhoon Jebi in Japan, false and misleading claims about stranded Taiwanese travelers were weaponized to portray Chinese officials as competent and Taiwanese officials as negligent. The online pressure became so intense that a Taiwanese diplomat later died by suicide. The lesson is painful: narratives can kill reputations, destroy trust, and deepen grief.
The Philippines should understand this danger better than most. It has been described in global debates as “patient zero” and a “petri dish” for digital disinformation, partly because of its highly online population and polarized politics. In 2020, Facebook removed a Chinese linked network later analyzed as Operation Naval Gazing. It mixed South China Sea content, pro-China and pro-Duterte messaging, and experiments with fake foreign personas.
Across these cases, the story changes, but the objective remains: find what works, measure reactions, improve the system, then redeploy the lessons when the stakes are higher. That is why personalities matter. They are not only megaphones. They are sensors. Their audiences reveal which frames resonate, which emotions escalate, and which claims can survive correction or moderation.
An influencer with loyal followers can test outrage quickly. A small anonymous page can try more extreme accusations. A troll cluster can probe the limits of harassment. Together, they help build a bench of repeat amplifiers. If that bench learns how to weaponize a campus tragedy today, it can be mobilized tomorrow around elections, national security crises, or the West Philippine Sea.
The infrastructure remains. Only the topic changes. That is why we must look closer now, together.
