social media crisis – Katrina Stuart Santiago

It would be silly to talk about the present of politics in this country without acknowledging two, maybe three, things.

First, that we are at a standstill. From the ranks of our specific educated, middle to elite classes, generally woke and politicized, that campaigned hard for a Marcos-Duterte loss in May 2022 — there is little movement happening. Sure we went back to our old lives since May, we went back to the daily grind, but that is a movement that is about survival for majority of us — we have no choice given skyrocketing prices and the multifarious crises nation faces. We have no choice, and know no other way, but to go back to the lives we had pre-elections, no matter how frustrated, angry, sad we are. No matter how little we understand (or how much) of why things turned out the way it did.

Which brings us to two: here, where we are, a year after the 2022 elections, we have to admit the possibility that we have stood still all along — because that is what happens to movement when all it does is go around in circles, or repeat its own mistakes, or deny how big the enemy is and how the battlefield has changed.

It is what happens when we cannot get over ourselves, when we only listen to what we have to say, when we insist that we are the only ones who know what’s happening, who know what should be done, who have the answer to questions — because we lived through a past that was similar, because we are older, we are the fourth estate, which is replaceable with what’s unsaid: we are the gatekeepers, we are the bearers of truth, we are sacred cows, not to be questioned, not to be critiqued.

It is what happens when we refuse to see the possibility that maybe we should start with first asking the right questions, so that we get the productive answers, in dialogue with as large a group of people as possible, open to the probability that the ways we know, the perspectives we take, might not apply to the present anymore. (more…)

Hate and lies don’t stop in a time of a pandemic—we are after all under a government that lives off this kind of propaganda. But when it comes from regular people who deserve respect for fighting for the poor and oppressed, the farmers and the peasants and the workers, you can only be taken aback, to say the least. That they would even take the time to fashion you as enemy, throw shade in your direction, especially on social media comment threads where discrediting a person is quick and easy, here and now, well, there is a time of reckoning for that.

This is not that time, but it is the time for some clarification. So let me take precious energy to talk about the accusation that I “defended a rapist” last year. A controversial, sensationalist statement to make, a juicy piece of news to hear about the person who wrote a review of Ang Huling El Bimbo in 2018, and questioned its handling of the rape of the lead character Joy; the same person who likes to see herself as a feminist, who writes about being woman in this country, who builds upon the kawomenan of many others. But of course via people like artist and peasant advocate Donna Miranda, what will surface is nothing at all about what I’ve written, or the play in question. Instead it will be this statement from her: “Gusto ko man basahin ang review na yan nahihirapan ako bilang nagtanggol ng rapist yung manunulat a year after.”

What a way to take down a person: throw a one-liner, attack her, try to ruin her credibility. Who cares if it’s true?

(more…)

The first time a young writer came out with a Facebook status (dated August 2) about having been taken “sexual advantage” of in a writing workshop, I shared it with a very clear statement about silence. Fresh from the CNN Life panel for the Readers and Writers Fest where we were asked what is the biggest realization we’ve had about the cultural sector, I said that it is about how much of it operates on silence. We don’t know what’s going on, how things are decided, how the systems work, and all that we ever discuss is what we see on the surface: the finished art work, the published piece, the film, the TV show, the dress. But the work that goes into that, the institutions that come into play, the oppressions that are intrinsic to that system — we are kept in the dark about these things. After all, we can be so aware of power relations and capital, and still deny what that truly means. (more…)

It seems the learning curve is steep for Martin Andanar — and everyone else on the Duterte communications team. A year in, and this week’s mistakes and mishaps can only be symptoms of the bigger crisis that is Presidential and government communications. We are also reminded (yet again!) that we are wasting public funds on the salaries of officials who have no idea what they’re doing.

After a year, instead of actually evolving in his knowledge of social media, Andanar is still stuck on his simpleton assessment of what social media is about. He’s still working with the nonsense of counting followers like it matters. Department Order 15, which seeks to accredit “social media practitioners” to cover PCOO and Presidential events even asserts that social media is where “the citizenry” might be “engaged” in order to “enrich the quality of discourse.”

Was Andanar in the Philippines the past year? At what point did partisan social media (that is, pro-Duterte and pro-Dilawan) “enrich the quality of discourse”?

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Probably the worst thing about the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) as run by Secretary Martin Andanar is that it has dared ask Congress for a bigger 2017 budget.

This, despite the fact that it has no communications plan, no strategy for information dissemination, and on a most basic level, does not even have one working, credible, well-developed official government website, four months in.

Instead it’s working off three different Facebook pages – all of which do not cost a single cent – which are all generally devoid of the important information we need about government. Why should we spend more on this office that does nothing but make things worse: through its silences, and even given its articulations.

It might be said that all those who criticize government are temperamental brats. And yes, I’m taking that out of context. (more…)

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