This study investigates the move structures in deceptive political discourse on Facebook, anchored on Bhatia’s (2004) Applied Genre Analysis framework. It focused on identifying how deceptive texts are linguistically constructed to persuade, mislead, and mobilise political engagement within the Filipino social media landscape. The dataset consists of 200 Facebook posts flagged as deceptive by three leading fact-checking organisations in the Philippines—VERA Files, Rappler, and Fact Check Philippines—published between 2015 and 2024. Through qualitative coding, the researchers identified three major rhetorical moves: (1) Establishing a Claim, (2) Reinforcing the Claim, and (3) Mobilising the Audience, each with distinct rhetorical steps such as vilification, emotional reinforcement, legal referencing, directive prompts, and hashtag advocacy. These moves function not only to simulate credibility but also to exploit emotional, cultural, historical, and political contexts. Furthermore, the study explores the interdiscursivity of deceptive posts, revealing how they draw upon and mimic journalistic, legal, religious, and conspiratorial genres. The findings demonstrate that deceptive political Facebook posts are not randomly structured but are also systematically designed to appeal to affective reasoning and socio-political bias. These posts employ hybrid discourse patterns that reflect the evolving genre of digital political communication. By mapping the rhetorical anatomy of deceptive political discourse in the Philippines, the research offers insights into how manipulation functions linguistically and culturally within the digital public sphere.

Keywords: deceptive texts; political discourse; Facebook; genre analysis; disinformation

DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2026-3202-05

Aamodt, M. G., & Mitchell, H. (2004). Who can best detect deception: A meta-analysis. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology, Rome.

Ali Adeeb, R., & Mirhoseini, M. (2023). The impact of affect on the perception of fake news on social media: A systematic review. Social Sciences, 12(12), 674. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12120674

Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211–236.

Asr, F. T., & Taboada, M. (2018). The data challenge in misinformation detection: Source reputation vs. content veracity. In Proceedings of the First Workshop on Fact Extraction and VERification (FEVER) (pp. 10–15).

Bellemare, A., & Ho, J. (2020, April 20). Social media firms catching more misinformation, but critics say 'they could be doing more'. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/social-media-platforms-pandemic-moderation-1.5536594

Berger, L. M., Kerkhof, A., Mindl, F., & Münster, J. (2025). Debunking “fake news” on social media: Immediate and short-term effects of fact-checking and media literacy interventions. Journal of Public Economics, 245, 105345. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105345

Bhatia, V. K. (2004). Worlds of written discourse: A genre-based view. Bloomsbury Publishing. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474212038

Bradshaw, S., & Howard, P. N. (2017). Troops, trolls and troublemakers: A global inventory of organized social media manipulation. Oxford Internet Institute.

Damstra, A., Boomgaarden, H. G., Broda, E., Lindgren, E., Strömbäck, J., Tsfati, Y., & Vliegenthart, R. (2021). What does fake look like? A review of the literature on intentional deception in the news and on social media. Journalism Studies, 22(14), 1947–1963.

https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2021.1979423

De Waal, F. B. M. (2005). Intentional deception in primates. Evolutionary Anthropology, 1(3), 86–92. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.1360010306

Ekström, M., & Tolson, A. (2017). Media talk and political elections in Europe and America. Palgrave Macmillan.

Enli, G., & Moe, H. (2015). Social media and election campaigns: Key tendencies and ways forward. Information, Communication & Society, 16(5), 637–645.

Eusebio, E. (2022, May 23). [ANALYSIS] Fake news and internet propaganda, and the Philippine elections: 2022. Rappler. https://www.rappler.com/technology/features/analysis-fake-news-internetpropaganda-2022-philippine-elections/

Fatima, N., & Bibi, K. (2025). Investigating the spread and impact of fake news on social media: A case study of the train hijacking rumor in Balochistan. SSRN. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5327450

Frank, M. G., & Feeley, T. H. (2003). To catch a liar: Challenges for research in lie detection training. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 31(1), 58–75.

Guess, A., Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2018). Selective exposure to misinformation: Evidence from the consumption of fake news during the 2016 US presidential campaign. European Research Council, 9. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/fake-news2016.pdf

Kanoksilapatham. (2005). Rhetorical structure of biochemistry research articles. English for Specific Purposes, 24(3), 269-292.

Lalu, G. P. (2022, October 11). Fake news sources: 58% say social media influencers spread false info. INQUIRER.net. https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1678448/knowing-source-of-fake-news-58-say-false-info-came-from-socmed-influencers

Lazer, D., Baum, M. A., Benkler, Y., Berinsky, A. J., Greenhill, K. M., Menczer, F., Metzger, M. J., Nyhan, B., Rand, D. G., Rothschild, D., Schudson, M., Sloman, S. A., Sunstein, C. R., Thorson, E. A., Watts, D. J., & Zittrain, J. L. (2018). The science of fake news. Science, 359(6380), 1094–

https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aao2998

Luo, H., Cai, M., & Cui, Y. (2021). Spread of misinformation in social networks: Analysis based on Weibo tweets. Security and Communication Networks, 2021, Article 6619843.

Mahyoob, M., Algaraady, J., & Alrahaili, M. (2020). Linguistic-Based detection of fake news in social media. International Journal of English Linguistics, 11(1), 99. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v11n1p99

Malah, Z., Paramasivam, S., Abdul Halim, H., & Mansor, N. S. (2025). (De)legitimation on Twitter: The case of speech acts in Buhari–Atiku campaign rhetoric during Nigeria’s 2019 elections. 3L: Language, Linguistics, Literature® The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language

Studies, 31(1). https://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2025-3101-03

Masip, J., Garrido, E., & Herrero, C. (2004). Facial appearance and impressions of “credibility”: The effects of facial babyishness and age on person perception. International Journal of Psychology, 39, 276–289. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207590444000014

Mina, R. (2022, November 9). Mapping COVID-19 fake news sources in PH. ABS-CBN News. https://news.abs-cbn.com/life/11/09/22/mapping-covid-19-fake-news-sources-in-ph

Nguyen, T. T., Nguyen, D. C., Nguyen, H. T., Do, H. T., Ngo, T., Pham, A. B. G., Tran, T. Q., Hoang, L. P., Dang, H., Boyer, L., Fond, G., Latkin, C. A., Ho, R. C. M., Ho, C. S. H., & Zhang, M. W. B. (2025). Exposure to fake news on social media, coping mechanisms, and mental health

impact among Vietnamese adolescents and young adults. Scientific Reports, 15(1), 35117. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-19175-4

Nicks, S. D., Korn, J. H., & Mainieri, T. (1997). The rise and fall of deception in social psychology and personality research, 1921 to 1994. Ethics & Behavior, 7(1), 69–77. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327019eb0701_6

Oesch, N. (2016). Deception as a derived function of language. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, Article 1485. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01485

Ong, J. C., & Cabañes, J. V. (2018). Architects of networked disinformation: Behind the scenes of troll accounts and fake news production in the Philippines. Democratic Audit of the Philippines.

Patag, K. J. (2023, March 12). Marcos Jr. admin to head media literacy campaign vs misinformation, disinformation. Philstar Global. https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2023/03/12/2251090/marcos-jradmin-head-media-literacy-campaign-vs-misinformation-disinformation

Rocha, Y. M., de Moura, G. A., Desidério, G. A., de Oliveira, C. H., Lourenço, F. D., & de Figueiredo Nicolete, L. D. (2021). The impact of fake news on social media and its influence on health during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review. Journal of Public Health. Advance online

publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-021-01658-z

Sampang, D. (2025, February 28). Misinformation, disinformation can make or break 2025 polls – Comelec. INQUIRER.net. https://www.inquirer.net/430735/misinformation-disinformation-canmake-or-break-2025-polls-comelec-chief/

Searcy, W. A., & Nowicki, S. (2010). The evolution of animal communication: Reliability and deception in signaling systems. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400835720

Strangio, S. (2022, August 8). Facebook, Instagram purged millions of posts during Philippine election. The Diplomat. https://thediplomat.com/2022/08/facebook-instagram-purged-millions-ofposts-during-philippine-election/

Tandoc, E. C., Lim, Z. W., & Ling, R. (2018). Defining “fake news”: A typology of scholarly definitions. Digital Journalism, 6(2), 137–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1360143

Vrij, A. (1994). The impact of information and setting on the detection of deception by police detectives. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 18(2), 117–136.