Governing the Narrative: Algorithmic Power, Propaganda and the Ethical Resistance of Filipino Journalists in the 2022 Philippine National Elections

Abstract

This qualitative study investigates how Filipino journalists negotiated ethical dilemmas amid the algorithmic, polarised, and economically precarious media environment of the 2022 National and Local Elections. Drawing on 27 in-depth semi-structured interviews with practitioners from broadcast, online, and community news organisations, this study examines how journalists navigate algorithmic pressures and propaganda to regain control over their professional narratives. The findings reveal that digital networks accelerate newsroom timelines, compressing traditional editorial deliberation, and forcing gatekeepers to constantly negotiate with computational visibility regimes, which are automated platform algorithms that prioritise engagement over factual verification. To survive these pressures, practitioners employ dilemma triage, a tactical management of moral trade-offs, where they navigate platform engagement mechanics to fund, insulate, and sustain hard-hitting investigative election reporting amid institutional and economic precarity. Journalists also mitigate algorithmic anxiety and partisan hostility through relational moral buffering networks, which function as informal, horizontal peer support circles built outside corporate hierarchies for collective reflection and protection. To counter audience polarisation, practitioners engage in visible, process-based integrity work and use radical transparency to rebuild public trust. By linking these lived realities to systemic reforms across pedagogy, policy, and practice, this study conceptualises digital journalism ethics not as compliance with fixed codes, but as a dynamic capacity for moral resilience cultivated through peer mentorship and reflexive field prototyping, which is the collaborative, real-time adaptation of ethical workflows under structural duress.