Home⇛PCS Review⇛vol. 14 no. 1 (2022)

Hoaxford’s Candidate: Political Memes as an Empowering Response to “Dying Democracy”

Gerard Martin C. Suarez

Discipline: media studies

 

Abstract:

This paper engages with the idea that democracy is dying because of social media – an idea prevalent in mainstream Philippine political discourse. The idea is problematic because it paints a hopeless and deterministic picture of media’s effects and use within Philippine society and obscures possible interventions that citizens can undertake through social media platforms, the use of memes as critical discourse being one example. To support the argument, a critical discourse analysis was undertaken on a manually constructed opportunistic corpus focusing on the case of then presidential candidate Bongbong Marcos Jr.’s false claim that he is a University of Oxford graduate, and the memes and discourse it produced. The sample includes over one-hundred and twenty thousand comments drawing from news reports posted on Facebook by the Philippines’ top two mainstream outlets (i.e., ABS-CBN and GMA) and some critical citizens who grabbed mainstream media attention (i.e., Tarantadong Kalbo, the Oxford Philippines Society, and the nuns from Religious of the Good Shepherd). This analysis is anchored and guided by critical culture, meme, and participatory democratic theory. While memefication can be used both to reinforce political misinformation and further prevent actual civic engagement from happening, affirming mainstream discourse to an extent, meme discourse can be also be used to make citizens aware of false narratives and expand the scope of citizen democratic participation. The paper concludes by arguing for a more nuanced approach towards disinformation, highlighting the need to incorporate a broader sociocultural understanding in viewing both the problem and possible interventions. It argues for the inclusion of citizens and citizen practices alongside institutional approaches as they can serve as key allies to fighting back against disinformation.



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