A room full of Filipino police and soldiers stares intently at headlines projected on a screen, the latest students of a media bootcamp aimed at fighting their nation's flood of fake news. Scores of people ranging from girl scouts to government workers have already received the same innovative instruction in the Philippines, ranked the world's top user of social media.

"Which one is real?" asks class teacher Rowena Paraan, a veteran journalist with the top Philippine TV network ABS-CBN, as she stands in a sweltering gym on a military base. Her lesson is part of the channel's long-running citizen journalism training programme, which since late-2016 has shown some 25,000 people how to fight the fake news spike that accompanied President Rodrigo Duterte's rise.