Home⇛PCS Review⇛vol. 14 no. 1 (2022)

FROM THE WORDS OF A STRONGMAN: A Textual Analysis of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s Talk to the People Speeches During the Election Season vis-à-vis Audience’s Social Media Engagements

Thea Pamela Pauline A. Javier

Discipline: media studies

 

Abstract:

Using the Habermasian Public Sphere as a framework, the research examined President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s Talk to the People Speeches from April 11 to May 12, 2022, vis-à-vis the comments found during his live speeches on the Inquirer Facebook page. The study described the emergent themes in PRRD’s speeches and interpreted the arising discourses among various audiences on social media, particularly Facebook, concerning these speeches. The researcher was convinced that a careful examination of political discourses is a must, even more so now because of the rampant disinformation and spread of fake news, not to mention political propaganda and some attempts at historical revisionism. PRRD’s speeches were thematically analyzed, while the comments were triangulated using frequency distribution and textual analysis. The findings revealed that the themes that emerged in Duterte’s speeches were the same as his former ones, where he praises his allies and lambasts his critics in public while convincing the audience that he is anti-corruption and has led a clean government. As shown in most of the comments analyzed, most of his supporters continued to show loyalty despite his major blunders. The paper concluded that the former President used his platform to subtly gain future favors from the incoming administration while still maintaining his strongman façade. Facebook, as a digital Public Sphere, challenged Habermas’ original model since Duterte as the State and the Netizens as the People shared the same sentiments and overlapped, blurring the lines of their distinction. The researcher recommended that teachers in all grade levels teach the students critical thinking combined with fact-checking and use political discourses as a springboard for practice.



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