The Philippines’ fiery President Rodrigo Duterte has lashed out at Oxford University as a “school for stupid people” after it published a study claiming he had paid for a cyber army to increase his popularity on social media. The study, “Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organised Social Media Manipulation”, looked at the strategies used by political parties and candidates in 28 different countries to spread their party messaging and inflate social media engagement numbers.
It claims that Duterte’s camp paid $200,000 in 2016, the year he was elected, for a social media campaign that used citizens and groups to promote and defend him online. Duterte has admitted to paying people to defend him on social media but said this only happened during the campaign season, strongly denying it continued after he was elected.
“Now I do not need it. I do not need to defend myself against attacks. I stated my piece during my inauguration and my campaign,” he said, according to local news outlet, Rappler. “Oxford University? That’s a school for stupid people.”
Duterte, a former mayor from the southern city of Davao, won the 2016 election with a populist message that targeted drug trafficking.
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