Cheryll Ruth Soriano

This article interrogates political brokerage on YouTube by examining the platform’s role in the construction of political discourses and in configuring the action of a new genre of political actors advancing a political agenda through historical revisionism. Using assemblage theory and drawing from technography (Bucher, 2018), we propose the concept of ‘networked political brokerage’ to characterize the mutually affirming relationship of YouTube’s governance mechanisms and alternative political influencers’ microcelebrity practices in building, complementing, and magnifying historical revisionist narratives through and within a network of algorithmically-sanctioned videos. We illustrate how this interplay of platform logics and cultures of use (Rieder et al., 2018) privileges and legitimizes political content into knowledge without accountability. We argue for the importance of examining YouTube as a socio-technical driver of this political brokerage process in curating political i...

This article examines and theorises the relationships across three distinct forms of labour brokerage emerging in the digital platform labour economy: platform intermediation, ‘skill-making’, and ‘re-outsourcing’. Drawing from a 4-year digital ethnography on online freelancing and platform labour in the Philippines, one of the largest labour supplying countries globally, I pay special attention to how platform labour control emerges as a process that is constituted in the brokerage relationships at multiple scales between global capital, local capital, community, and family units, and emerging organised networks of workers and influencers on social media. The article examines the materiality of platform labour and the local informal economy that give rise to these forms of brokerage. I also describe how brokerage processes set norms and standards in this largely unregulated sector, thereby playing a role in how labour mobility or precarity are made possible and organised. The articl...

Hegemonic Open Science, emergent from the circuits of knowledge production in the Global North and serving the economic interests of platform capitalism, systematically erase the voices of the subaltern margins from the Global South and the Southern margins inhabiting the North. Framed within an overarching emancipatory narrative of creating access for and empowering the margins through data exchanged on the global free market, hegemonic Open Science processes co-opt and erase Southern epistemologies, working to create and reproduce new enclosures of extraction that serve data colonialism-capitalism. In this essay, drawing on our ongoing negotiations of community-led culture-centered advocacy and activist strategies that resist the racist, gendered, and classed structures of neocolonial knowledge production in the metropole in the North, we attend to Southern practices of Openness that radically disrupt the whiteness of hegemonic Open Science. These decolonizing practices foreground...

Drawing from experience of platform labor in one of the largest labor supplying countries, the Philippines, the paper demonstrates the role of an emerging labor category-that of digital labor influencers-who promote the viability of platform labor locally amid its precarious and ambiguous conditions. Through participant observation in Facebook groups, analysis of YouTube channels and videos, and interviews with digital labor influencers and workers, we present insights into the interventions that these influencers use, anchoring their strategies on what we call performing "digital labor bayanihan": (a) coaching workers on the "possibilities" of the platform economy and on how to navigate its structural ambiguities, (b) by acting as "agencies", they aid workers to span boundaries and fluidly move across platforms and job types to mitigate labor arbitrage and labor seasonality; and (c) bridging geographically dispersed workers, which allow them to form a ...

This special issue brings together six research articles that speak to the dynamics of digital communication in the Philippines, a country firmly located in the global geography of the digital economy and an early adopter and innovator in mobile communication. Increasingly, the rise of digital platforms is spurring on new business models and applications that find a wide range of appropriations in a developing economy with a high level of communication skills and a high level of inequality. These dynamics have, in turn, fuelled the popularity of social media and the populism that has gained international attention and, more critically, taken the country into uncharted political terrain. We introduce this Special Issue by taking stock of the legacies and potentials of digital communication in the country and highlighting how the articles sustain and extend past conversations. Drawing from the articles that cover a range of topics (entertainment, intimacy, labour, journalism and polit...

Research on digital worker experiences have shed light on the problematic realities of digital labor, which include increasing levels of stress and anxiety over financial and career instability, physical exhaustion, and isolation - all of which underscore the precarity that belie the optimistic facade of labor under the new economy. Given the multiple constraints underlying collective formation among digital workers, this panel explores the characteristics and dynamics of emerging forms of collective organisation among digital workers by reflecting on experiences from China, the Philippines, Brazil, and India. Examining experiences of digital labor organisation and challenges to build solidarity across national and even regional experience, the panel hopes to enrich the discussion in terms of the politics, cultural nuances, and local meanings useful for examining digital worker expressions of resistance and solidarity amidst continuing technological development and platform reforms....

This paper re-examines YouTube as a site of feminine, networked, and intimate sociality among Filipino women online. We unpack this by identifying how commenters on YouTube engage with the performativity of an intimate relationship between a Filipina and her foreign husband on YouTube. Extending Mina Roces’ concept of ‘local sisterhood’ in the digital context, we coin the term ‘online sisterhood’ to articulate the diverse ways through which Filipino women engage with interracial intimacies in the realm online communication. By conducting a thematic analysis of comments on a popular YouTube channel of a Filipina married to a Caucasian man, we uncover the dimensions of an unfolding online sisterhood as aspirational, relatable, regulatory, and defensive modalities. We argue that these frames are informed by gendered, racialized, and even class-based aspirations and contestations tied to Philippine postcolonial history and society. Ultimately, as a site for feminine sociality and intimacy, YouTube also becomes a site for constructing, reinforcing as well as countering the stereotypical representations of Filipino women in a networked and postcolonial space.

The article examines the role of social media groups for online freelance workers in the Philippines—digital workers obtaining “gigs” from online labor platforms such as Upwork and Onlinejobs.ph—for social facilitation and collective organizing. The article first problematizes labor marginality in the context of online freelance platform workers situated in the middle of competing narratives of precarity and opportunity. We then examine unique forms of solidarity emerging from social media groups formed by these geographically spread digital workers. Drawing from participant observation in online freelance Facebook groups, as well as interviews and focus groups with 31 online freelance workers located in the cities of Manila, Cebu, and Davao, we found that online Filipino freelancers maintain active social interaction and exchange that can be construed as “entrepreneurial solidarities.” These solidarities are characterized by competing discourses of ambiguity, precarity, opportunity...

This chapter offers an exploratory analysis of data journalism experiences of four of the most established and largest news organizations in the Philippines. The research examines how these local news organizations adopted data journalism into their traditional practice beginning in the 1990s when use of the internet likewise started. The paper tracks the development of data journalism in the Philippines by analyzing: 1) key organizational changes that needed to be made in the move towards a more data-driven approach in reporting; 2) adjustments in the story identification, research, collaboration, analysis, and presentation of stories as well as challenges encountered; and, 3) emerging good practices as well as areas for strengthening organizational capacity and institutional and legal hindrances that pose challenges for data journalism to thrive locally.

Building on scholarly explorations on the nuances of labor conditions in emerging knowledge economies in the Global South and the glocalization of the digital labor market, this paper examines how coworking spaces in Philippines are designed and organized. In particular, we explore the role that these alternative workspaces take in addressing the unique needs of local digital platform workers or online freelancers. The Philippines ranks third, after the US and India, among the countries with the greatest number of online freelancers. Drawing from a multi-sited ethnography of coworking spaces in Metro Manila including interviews with coworking space managers as well as Filipino online freelancers, the paper explores how the latter perceive the role and experience the value of coworking spaces. Echoing Oreglia and Ling’s notion of “digital imagination,” we find that digital workers sustain a unique sense of “aspirational belonging” to coworking spaces which we describe as a state of w...

This paper attempts to avoid both overly optimistic and pessimistic accounts of the ‘on-demand’ global economy and of ‘platform labor’ in the Global South. It instead considers both how the socio-cultural and economic complexities of the worker environment might drive the attractiveness of this form of labor and how histories of colonialism might make local employment and upward mobility less of a viable option for workers from the Global South. Drawing from in-depth interviews and analysis of multiple texts circulating in online freelance forums, Facebook groups, and ‘freelancer’ events, we look at how freelance workers and platform managers enacted and articulated classed and colonial digital labor imaginaries. We identify three such interconnected imaginaries and label them as follows: that of ‘distinction,’ ‘transcendence,’ and ‘flexibility’. In fleshing out these digital labor imaginaries, we discuss the role of virtual spaces, online communities, and the influencers who help p...

BACKGROUND As soon as President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office in 2016, the Philippine government launched a nationwide antidrug campaign based on enforcement-led anti-illegal drugs policies primarily implemented by the national police. This was followed by a spate of killings resulting from both acknowledged police operations and by unidentified assailants. This study assembles a victim-level dataset of drug-related killings covered by the media during the Philippine government's antidrug campaign, and presents a spatial and temporal analysis of the killings. METHODS The dataset covers information on 5021 people killed from May 10, 2016 to September 29, 2017. Data collected systematically through online search procedures and existing listings of media organizations detailing information about incidences of drug-related police operations and drug-related killings in 'vigilante-style' manner reveal patterns for who were being killed, where, and how. RESULTS Over half of the killings were due to acknowledged police operations, and the rest were targeted in so-called 'vigilante-style' killings. The first three months after Mr. Duterte was sworn in were the deadliest months. Those who were killed were mostly low-level drug suspects. The analysis of temporal pattern reveals the scale of killings in the country, with rapid escalation starting in July 2016 and lasting throughout the rest of that year. Observable declines occurred during periods when the 'drug war' was suspended and operations were moved to a non-police enforcement unit and rose again when police were brought back into operations. The spatial analysis indicates a large concentration of deaths in the National Capital Region (40%) compared to the rest of the country with wide variations across cities and regions. CONCLUSIONS Overall, the Philippine 'drug war' exhibits similarities with violent wars on drugs waged in other countries such as Thailand, with heavily police-led interventions leading to fatalities in the thousands over a span of under two years. Findings of this study point to important policy adjustments that need to be made, including the role that local governments play in drug policy implementation, the disproportionate negative impacts of enforcement-led policies against drugs on urban and poor areas, the targeting of low-level suspected drug dealers and users, and the importance of proper data monitoring and transparency by the government to inform policy adjustments in the face of high costs to human life. We also discuss the importance of independent monitoring systems when the government reports conflicting information.

News media’s construction of crime and drugs can shape and change public perceptions and influence popular acceptance of policy and state responses. In this way, media, through selection of sources and framing of narratives, act as important agents of social control, either independently or indirectly by state actors. This article examines how the Philippine government’s anti-drug campaign, and the thousands of deaths resulting from them, has been depicted by the media to the public. We conducted a discourse analysis of television news stories to extract dominant frames and narratives, finding a pattern of over-privileging of State authority as a source, resulting in a monolithic message of justifying the killing of suspects. Furthermore, the ‘event-focused’ slant, which dominates the character of reports by media, inevitably solidifies the narrative that the deaths are a necessary consequence of a national public safety campaign. By relying almost exclusively on this narrative, to ...

This study assembles the first national victim-level dataset of drug-related killings during the Philippine government’s antidrug campaign under President Rodrigo Duterte. The dataset covers information on 5,021 people killed from May 10, 2016 to September 29, 2017. Based on the data culled mostly from media reports, we identified who were being killed, where, how and why. Over half of the killings were due to police operations, and the rest were killed in so-called “vigilante-style” killings. Those who were killed were mostly low-level drug suspects. Forty percent of the killings were in Metro Manila mostly in Manila, Quezon City, and Caloocan. High death tolls were also observed in Bulacan and Cebu. Killings commonly occurred on the streets or alleys and in or around private homes. The study mainly relies on media sources which is a limitation that we hope to address by expanding the scope of the project.

This article examines the use of Let’s Play (LP) in Manila, Philippines. LP is an emerging genre in which players record, narrate, and broadcast video game play online. While in Western contexts LP is predominantly viewed in domestic settings, our focus is on the distinct manner in which LP is viewed in the Philippines, resulting in unique social architectures of play that coalesce public and private practices. In particular, the arcade-style vending machine, pisonet (a conflation between the Filipino piso [currency] + inter[net]), plays a key role in shaping net cultures within everyday life. Through the pisonet, unique forms of performative play happen in and around the watching play of LP. These types of performativity around LP see intergenerational and public forms of play, spectatorship, and surveillance entangle. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Metropolitan Manila, this study aims to conceptualize how public spaces, screens, and play—through the LP on pisonets—b...

The aim of this study is to show the media’s role in shaping, crystallizing and legitimizing a state­driven discourse of fear of illegal drug use, crime, and dehumanization of drug users. Drawing from a discourse analysis of news reports about the killings connected to the Philippine government’s campaign against illegal drugs, the paper argues that privileging a single source (state authority) and taking an “event­-focused” slant which were found to dominate the character of the reports, unwittingly give the state narrative control leading to the justification of a state­-led policy of zero-tolerance policing towards illegal drugs. As we critically examine how drugs, drug use, and the zero-tolerance policy are positioned through discourse in news texts, the paper raises important implications to the ethics and role of journalism in politics and provides explanations relating to crime reporting norms, values, and media organization realities.

In Asia, amidst its varied levels of economic development and diverse cultural traditions and political regimes, the Internet and mobile communications are increasingly used in every aspect of life. Yet the analytical frames used to understand the impact of digital media on Asia predominantly originate from the Global North, neither rooted in Asia’s rich philosophical traditions, nor reflective of the sociocultural practices of this dynamic region. This volume examines digital phenomena and its impact on Asia by drawing on specifically Asian perspectives. Contributors apply a variety of Asian theoretical frameworks including guanxi, face, qing, dharma and karma. With chapters focusing on emerging digital trends in China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Singapore, and Taiwan, the book presents compelling and diverse research on identity and selfhood, spirituality, social networking, corporate image, and national identity as shaped by and articulated through digital commu...

In exploring the relationship between advertising and cultural rituals, this chapter examines how Philippine television advertisements for mobile technology products and services use the frame of ritual and mobilize the various dimensions of kapwa (connecting to significant others) to appeal to consumers. We question how advertisements reify the importance of culturally-embedded rituals and relationships that are underscored by shared values to shape the mobile phone’s place in society. At the same time, we explore how advertising promotes the ritual of mobile communication and consumption through aspirational marketing campaigns that frame social reality through a ritualized system of symbolic production. The paper will argue that aside from engaging cultural rituals in mobile advertising, the advertising of mobile services can be considered as a “media ritual” (Couldry, 2003) as it entrenches forms of social organization within a locale and the centrality of mobile communication i...

In this introductory chapter, the authors explore why the internationalization of media studies has been stymied and argue that the conditions are now ripe for invigorating this effort, especially in and through Asia. The fervent adoption of information and communication technologies in Asia, the region’s rapid economic growth, and its youthful and increasingly well-educated populace have lent impetus to the adoption, consumption, appropriation and production of media content and technologies. Juxtaposed against these contemporaneous developments are the enduring traditions and cultural values of the region that are simultaneously shaped by and shaping the socio-technological landscape. Although media systems and experiences are increasingly being shaped by global flows and exchanges, the chapter makes a case for the importance of looking back at these enduring Asian concepts to inform our nuanced understanding of everyday experiences of communication and technology engagement in th...

This article examines the translocal context of emerging information and communication technology (ICT) for the “have-less,” with a focus on public access ICT that emerged to become popular in low-income communities in the Philippines: the pisonet (one-peso net). Drawing from two years of in-depth interviews and participant observation in slum communities in the Philippines and reviews of ICT governance reports, the case examines how the pisonet emerged and diffused, and the communicative assemblage: a complex interplay of global technological discourses, national ICT governance mechanisms, social innovators, spatial conditions, and socioeconomic context that together forge the development of particular ICT ecologies and shape techno-social practices in this locale.

Abstract Following an analysis of humanitarian-assistance principles and of the roots of the Mindanao conflict, this paper contrasts the relief and rehabilitation strategy of the government with civil-society efforts in building the “Space for Peace” in

... on Information and Communication Technology) Roy Ibay, Esq (Smart Communications, Inc.) Antonio Inocentes (Department of Education) Mayette Macapagal (Bearing Point) Francisco Magno, PhD (La Salle-Institute of Governance) Pamela Mappala (Agricultural Training ...

Given the experience the Philippines has had extending, via mobile telephony, financial and other services to people traditionally excluded, there is a need to identify the underlining factors behind, and current reality of, m-Banking and similar services in the country. This experience and some lessons learned from it are detailed in this report.

he Routledge Handbook of Strategic Communication provides the first comprehensive review of research in the strategic communication domain and offers educators and graduate-level students a compilation of approaches to and studies of varying aspects of the field. The volume provides insights into ongoing discussions that build an emerging body of knowledge.

This chapter explores the implications of mobile technologies on gender through the lens of gender rituals. While maintaining social order and social roles, rituals also legitimate key category differences, ideologies, and inequalities. The increasing convergence of media and content in mobile devices, and the blurring of the spaces for work, family, and leisure amidst the landscape of globalization and mobility have important implications for the enactment of rituals, and in the performance of gender. The chapter discusses this mutual shaping of gender rituals and mobile technologies through a case study of the Philippines, with some broad implications for other contexts. The study finds that the personalization, mobility, and multitude of applications afforded by mobile devices offer many opportunities for the exploration of new possibilities for subjectivity that challenge particular gender stereotypes and restrictions while simultaneously affirming particular gender rituals. While exploring the implications of the mobile device on gender in a developing society, the chapter in turn highlights the importance of culturally embedded rituals in shaping and understanding the mobile device's place in society.

ABSTRACT The opportunities that the Internet brings for civil society groups, from information dissemination to deliberation and from service delivery to mobilization have led scholars to anticipate it to be a critical resource for communication and collaboration with its stakeholders. However, such studies on the breadth and level of use remain limited, mostly on transnational or developed country NGOs, or focused on a few exceptional cases. This exploratory study aims to contribute to the still scant body of empirical evidences through an analysis of the websites of 193 non-government organizations (NGOs) in the Philippines. This study investigates the website features of Philippine. NGOs: from serving as a platform for information dissemination and advocacy, creating an arena for discussion and dialogue, strengthening organizational capacity, online service-delivery, to mobilizing action. Attention is made on differentiating Internet use by accredited and non-accredited NGOs and draws important implications to state-civil society relations in the information age. The study is critical as it provides a much-needed empirical/baseline research for supporting internet use/efficacy theory building, particularly with the civil society as the user-context. It finds that website usage patterns tend towards information provision with some promise for organizational strengthening and that there are functional differences in the way accredited and non-accredited NGOs use websites. Broader issues of civil society and the Internet, including NGO resource issues, accreditation and legitimacy in the information society, and emerging patterns of power are brought into the discussion.

The online communicative environment is expected to revolutionize political discourse as it expands to cover underrepresented groups and ideas. In this platform, marginalized groups such as indigenous communities from the developing world can articulate claims, ...

ABSTRACT Purpose ‐ This longitudinal study aims to analyze the use of websites by a sample of 78 corporations and non-profits five years apart. In particular, it studies organizational use of interactive and social media features and use of web sites for building relationships with six stakeholder publics. Design/methodology/approach ‐ The authors studied the websites of 78 for-profit and not-for-profit organization seeking to learn how they used this new medium as a communication tool to build and maintain relationships with six key stakeholders: the mass media, consumers, investor/donors, employees, the government, and the community in 2004 and in 2009. They also explored for differences in the way for-profit corporations and non-profits used their web sites for relationship building given their different missions and cultures. Findings ‐ First, there was a marked difference in how corporations and non-profit organizations used their websites. Second, a significant number of organizations used social media applications such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube through their websites in 2009. Third, aside from increased use of social media, in 2009 more organizations used feedback mechanisms such as e-surveys and e-polls embedded in their websites, enhancing interactions with a variety of stakeholders. Both corporations and non-profit organizations generally utilized their websites as information-dissemination tools, where the information flow is one-way, although the percentage of both corporations and non profits that used interactive features offered by new media has increased slightly between 2004 and 2009. Originality/value ‐ This study is among the few that compare web page use by corporations vs non-profits. A second unique feature of this study is that it is longitudinal in nature, studying web site use five years apart by the same organizations.