Analysis Of Abigail Aquino, A Confidant Against Trolls

Abigail Aquino, a Confidant Against Trolls

This year is only in its third month but for Senator Antonio Trillanes, no time is too early to blare their stance in countering another worldly issue of this time: the spread of fake news and social media trolls. The senator has already filed two Senate resolutions, one in January and one just this month, seeking to probe the spread false information and accounts in the country and their impending effects.

However, this seriousness does not quite fit the conversation I had with the senator’s communications head, Abigail Aquino, last March 20 in their office in Pasay where I asked, “How do you handle fake news and the trolls that come with it?”

“Um, we don’t care,” she jokes as she dashes out
But even though they are partly “sensitive” about it, they are selective on where to put this reaction, and they eagerly work through it.

“You should only choose which [false information] you should react to. How do we deal with them? For example, when a negative issue comes out, we always look into who shared it, we then check the profiles, and the instant we know they’re fake, we ignore them,” she shared.

Seated on the couch inside their chief information officer’s office, Aquino offers this comfortable vibe any public relations (PR) professionals are natural to. Also, a part of which is their ability to be people persons. However, as a University of the Philippines-Diliman political science graduate with innate skills in legal research and drafting bills or resolutions, she worked her way to improve these given “legal” skills to PR “naturales” with the help of her boss.

“I'm more comfortable with research [work], writing papers, drafting bills, digesting issues, but Sen. Trillanes encouraged me to embrace [the PR work]. He trained me and helped me look for seminars. He also exercises my mind by asking my stand on certain issues and what action we should take,” she
And this love for the work aided her in what she considers another challenging time in their office as the senator is almost always in the hot pot when it comes to rebutting the president.

“The [political] issues are what makes this job tiring, not necessarily the job itself. For example, senator does this and he isn’t appreciated because the perception of the public is prejudiced already, and they fail to appreciate what he did,” she exclaimed.

Then again, she affirms that all of these are part of her job. And the more challenging her task is, the more she enjoys solving it. She would choose analyzing issues over deciding what Sen. Trillanes’s facial expression should be, what should he be wearing, or even coming up with a PR