social media – Page 2 – Katrina Stuart Santiago

A little over a week since the May 9 elections, and one understand why those on the side of democracy, Left, Liberal, and civil society, feel like we’ve been robbed.

In that sense, everyone’s performing like victims. Some are raising their fists against the irregularities on election day—dysfunctional vote counting machines, dysfunctional SD cards, long lines because of both, voters disenfranchised. Some have flexed their privilege: not going to help the poor anymore, not going to help nation anymore, bahala kayo sa buhay niyo. Some have shot back at actual people who they know voted for Marcos: magbayad kayo ng utang niyo! A day or two after elections, we heard of some small NGOs losing their funders—purportedly, people were not wanting to help the new government at all, and that is equated with not wanting to help the most vulnerable.

Many are spreading all sorts of disinformation about the president-elect, letting this permeate social media accounts in the way that rumors do. It is fueled, shared across platforms, thrown around Viber and messenger GCs for good measure. Never mind fact checking—it always feels good to have our perceptions proven right by any kind of information at all.

But I guess we want to forgive ourselves for these responses? Emotions are high. We thought we were going to win after all—especially if we believed surveys were unreliable. And now we are grasping at straws, picking the stories and narratives that serve our purpose, because it is the only way to keep the fire burning.

But at a time like this one, these responses, public as they are, do nothing but fuel this divide that already exists, a polarization that we now know is really about 14 million vs 31 million. And we need to understand that it doesn’t matter whether or not you think or believe polarization is happening—the fact is, it already is.

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On repeat: I do not think misogyny and the patriarchy are those big ideas that have made this electoral race an uphill climb for VP Leni. That has no basis if one considers the kind of very feminine, very female, very woman empowerment frames that have been created for the women on the Marcos-Duterte side—from Manang Imee to Tita Irene, to Sara Duterte herself. Let me not begin about Liza Araneta, or even their female supporters like Dawn Zulueta. It has even less basis if we consider that throughout the past two years in this pandemic, it is the women in communities that have risen quickly, worked on survival and recovery efforts, taken on more than they usually do. Yes, patriarchy is here. No, it isn’t as simplistic as saying “majority of voters are patriarchal”—like that dictates the numbers we shade on our ballots.

Let’s be clear: there are many reasons why the Robredo-Pangilinan campaign has failed to capture the imagination of the 90% of voters we need to convert. No, the reasons are not as simple as so many 280-character tweets insist it is. This is not about the campaign being “feminine,” nor about the campaign being middle class.

And certainly, the solution is not to make it “more masculine.” These assertions are borne of terrible oversimplifications, i.e., that since Duterte has high-approval ratings, therefore what we need is more masculinity, more military, on VP Leni’s campaign. That fails to consider that the past four years a majority of us—and yes, that cuts across social classes—have grown tired of the militarized governance of Duterte. No, people are not tired of Duterte, but they are at the receiving end of his military and police, so emboldened by having a President who will forgive them anything. To even imagine that any campaign would benefit from being seen with military and police officials at this point, is failing to read the room. (more…)

I was asked in a women’s month forum about what to do with comments on women being weak leaders, the kind that we encounter on social media when we talk about being on the side of Robredo-Pangilinan in this heavily polarized electoral exercise. The context of course is the notion that we remain a heavily patriarchal society, and as such, there is a basic, illogical, refusal to even consider a woman leader.

My answer was simple: I do not think that VP Leni’s womanhood is what’s being attacked, as much as it is her person. And yes, those can be one and the same, but in this particular case, given propaganda against her that’s run its course the past six years, and has escalated across this campaign, hindi ito tungkol sa pagiging anti-woman, tungkol ito sa pagiging anti-Leni.

This is the same VP Leni that’s been called Leni Lugaw for years, na nag-evolve to Leni Lutang, at nag-evolve to Lenlen nitong nakaraang ilang buwan. These three things are interconnected, and are part of a bigger narrative against VP Leni that the other side has galvanized into massive black propaganda. And sure, Leni Lugaw started with Duterte supporters and propagandists, pero ang matindi sa social media, wala naman nang tumitingin saan nagsimula. Ang lagi lang natin nakikita ay kung ano ang nasa harap natin. Ibig sabihin, sa iba man nagmula ang Leni Lugaw at bagama’t simpleng paninira lang ito noon, iba ang gamit nito sa kasalukuyan ng kampanya. That the other side has been able to evolve it into two different things based solely on the exercise of spreading spliced videos and fake news that frame the vice president as incompetent and un-presidential—is the success of its campaign strat. They didn’t rest on the laurels of Lugaw, and as that was being turned into a positive, i.e., they shifted quickly to Lutang. (more…)

To some extent, it is no surprise how the closer we are to the May elections, the deeper we are into our echo chambers. This is, after all, what it means when more people agree on something. After all, the number of people it takes to disbelieve Covid numbers is also the same number of people you need to debunk Presidential surveys; the number of people you need to start believing SMNI would be the same number of people you need to start championing Google trends as the basis for “real” presidential survey numbers. The more you are in a bubble of a rally, the more you believe this is it, the election can be won by this.

That we are mirroring the actions of the other side should be no surprise, but it also bears articulation.

Here, a basic lesson in gentrification. The spaces we inhabit are based on our privilege, as it is based on the lack of it. Our access to certain areas of a city dictates the same. Places within the same city, even in the same zipcode, can completely disenfranchise the poor. Emerald Avenue, Ayala Avenue, and all the “business districts” do this. This is why the same stretch of JP Rizal that ties together Cembo, Pembo, Rembo is a space as fancy as Rockwell and Powerplant mall.

This is not the time to problematize gentrification. The point is only to acknowledge that the choices made for where the big Robredo rallies are held is indicative of the audience it caters to.

And that audience is us, people who are already voting for VP Leni, who are already voting for the 1Sambayan slate, who are already in the echo chamber. We are the ones who would not think twice about going to the business districts, who would not feel out-of-place in these spaces, and might even have friends and family who live in the area. The question really is why VP Leni is spending time and energy still talking to us, the people who are already on her side? (more…)

For six years we were in over our heads. We could barely keep up with Duterte, also because we couldn’t believe how he was pretty much getting away with the murder—figuratively and literally. Our institutions were discredited real quick—from basic rights, to our Constitution, to mainstream media—just as anti-people policies were implemented one after the other, and killings and violence escalated. As this unfolded the polarization was strengthened.

On one side, those of us who championed democracy and our institutions, even as we remained divided, through to the Liberal Party refusing unity slates in 2019 and 2022, and the Robredo campaign failing to claim unity and democracy as slogan for these times. It didn’t help that the people, especially on this side of democracy, refused and were un-interested in fashioning unities we deem important—it’s easier to fall back on the existing polarizations among us after all. This helped the other side, the Duterte government and its beneficiaries the Marcos-Arroyo tandem, with its anti-people and pro-China policies, to build its own “institutions” as option for its ever growing base of followers who needed “alternatives” to the media, intellectuals, academicians, historians, writers they had so discredited. Part of fashioning lies and falsity as the other truth, is making sure it can be repeated over and over again.

This polarization is what we are watching unfold as we stand here, with 56 days to go to May 9. And as I said earlier, these are actually two very different universes battling it out for people’s votes, and it is because of this that we cannot afford to be blinded by notions of hope and the massive rally turnouts for Robredo at this point. VP Leni herself has said “Crowds do not win elections,” but I would go beyond her suggestion that people go out to talk to family and neighbors. What needs to be done is to get to those who might not even know these rallies are happening because they are not online, have no proper or efficient access to mainstream media, and are inundated with paid-for content on local radio.

At hindi ito “pagpunta sa laylayan.” Hindi ito ang hinihingi. Makipag-usap sa kapwa-mamamayan. At hindi na ito mahirap gawin. Wala kaming lugar na hinanapan ng ground volunteer na hindi handang makipagusap. And if we ask the right questions, we get the answers we need: sinong iboboto ng mga komunidad? kilala ba nila si Robredo? Then you trust that they know these communities more than we ever could, and give them the help that they need—not the help we insist on giving them. (more…)

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