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Often marginalized from government services and markets and with limited access to mainstream media, the expansion of the reach of the Internet to previously underrepresented sectors inspires an examination of the place of online media for minorities, and in turn the role of these new actors, in shaping the future of media. In the Philippines, minority groups have recently developed online narratives, discursive spaces and productions in websites, blogs and social networking sites that allow them to bypass traditional distribution systems to articulate their respective struggles. This article engages 'Buechler's historical-dialectical-structurational approach' in analyzing the interdependence between these activist online media practices and the local, national, and global enabling and constraining structures that surround online cultural activism. Through an analysis of case studies representing ethnic, ethno-religious and sexual minorities in the Philippines, the article shows that minority groups' online political mobilization strategies are influenced by the historical, cultural and social circumstances and global power dynamics that surround their respective struggles and online activism. This situated analysis veers away from presenting minorities as mere recipients of technology but as online political activists creatively working their way through multiple structures and opportunities that come with online mediation.

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 Nalapaan, Pikit, North Cotabato. It identifies how the conflict's dynamics and actors shape the character of relief and rehabilitation assistance, and how the dynamics of relief and rehabilitation assistance feed the conflict or help address its roots. It also presents the potentials and limitations of relief and rehabilitation initiatives of government and civil society (in Nalapaan) in providing meaningful humanitarian assistance that addresses the conflict's roots and preventing the conflict from getting worse. The paper concludes by building a framework for carrying out a more meaningful relief and rehabilitation strategy in the context of the ongoing conflict in Mindanao, which puts an emphasis on strategizing beyond disaster management, incorporating the value of local capacities and fostering meaningful partnerships among stakeholders, and addressing the roots of the conflict and promoting a "culture of peace."

The internet has opened up a space for discussions of queer sexuality and the interconnectivity made possible by internet technologies enables the active exchange of queer ideologies across distant spaces that facilitate the formation of 'queer counterpublics'. But how do cyberqueer movements form a collectivity amid the instability of individual and collective identities and the vulnerabilities and controls posed by new technology mediation? Through the case study of Ladlad, a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) political party in the Philippines, this paper examines the role of online media in the construction of a queer movement. The article argues that the process of connectivity facilitated by online spaces creates nodes of identification, belonging, and support that symbolically form a collective site of resistance to sources of oppressive power for LGBTs.

This article explores the engagement of online new media for political mobilization by movements of dissent from the margins based on a case study of a Muslim minority revolutionary organization in the Philippines. We find that, enabled by hybrid features of online media outlets, minorities use multiple transcripts that target diverse audiences and oscillate across multiple, fleeting representations, narratives and articulations. Our article supports the view that 'infrapolitics' (the politics of disguise and concealment that lies between public and hidden transcripts of subordinate groups) is crucial in understanding online dissent. The article argues that new strategies of political discourse foregrounding infrapolitics help minority groups to circumvent traditional barriers of political communication and alter the quality of debate between minorities, state and the international community, and challenge national limits and boundaries.

A (digital) giant awakens : invigorating media studies with Asian perspectives / Sun Sun Lim and Cheryll Ruth R. Soriano -- Face and online social networking / Sun Sun Lim and Iccha Basnyat -- My letter to heaven via email : translocal piety and mediated selves in urban Marian piety in the Philippines / Manuel Victor J. Sapitula and Cheryll Ruth R. Soriano -- Exploring Confucianism in understanding face-ism in online dating sites of eastern and western cultures / Michael Prieler -- Credibility, reliability, and reciprocity : mobile communication, guanxi, and protest mobilization in contemporary China / Jun Liu -- The local sociality and emotion of jeong in Koreans' media practices / Kyong Yoon -- Ritual and communal connection in mobile phone communication : representations of kapwa, bayanihan and people power in the Philippines / Cheryll Soriano and Sun Sun Lim -- What is corporate social responsibility (CSR) in India? : discursive constructions of CSR as sarva loka hitam in online narratives of companies in India / Ganga S. Dhanesh -- Shadow and soul : stereoscopic phantasmagoria and holographic immortalization in transnational Chinese pop / Liew Kai Khiun -- Tweets in the limelight : the contested relationship between (dis)harmony and newsworthiness / Yeon-Ok Lee -- Asian modernity and the post human future : some reflections / T.T. Sreekumar -- Re-orienting global digital cultures / Gerard Goggin

AbstractThis article interrogates platform governance and accountability amid the growing role of influencers in constructing political discourses, and particularly, in the intermediation of anti‐media ideological frames through their embeddedness in networked assemblages. We deploy the concept of "networked political brokerage" to examine the sociotechnical relations among influencers, the platform, and its users, and how this dynamic assemblage engages in the intermediation of anti‐media populism. The study draws from a critical examination of the network and discursive tactics deployed by Filipino YouTube influencers who advance partisan political commentary and deceptive narratives to delegitimize mainstream media institutions through issue network analysis concerning the franchise denial and eventual shutdown of the Philippines' oldest media network, ABS‐CBN. We problematize how influencers engage platform affordances and cultures of use to enable, amplify, and fortify the brokering of their political agenda within a larger network of political actors, while eliding accountability. Through the mutually affirming relationship of content creators and the platform, networked hyperpoliticized contents gain visibility and galvanize anti‐media rhetoric. Ultimately, the article raises concerns on the social consequences of networked political brokerage and offers a framework for how governance and policy discussions can treat the functioning of such networked political influence.

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, and adaptation that are articulated and visualized through ambient socialities. While we argue that these entrepreneurial solidarities do not reflect a passive and simplistic acceptance of neoliberal discourses about digital labor by digital workers, the solidarities forged in these groups also work to undermine their resistive potential such that these tend to reinforce rather than impose pressure toward critical structural changes that can improve the viability of digital labor conditions.

Amid the proliferation of a range of new and ubiquitous online platforms, YouTube, a video-based platform, remains a key driver in the democratisation of creative, playful, vernacular, intimate, as well as political expressions. As a critical node of contemporary communication and digital cultures, its steady uptake and appropriation in a social media-savvy nation such as the Philippines requires a critical examination of its role in the continued reconstruction of identities, communities, and broader social institutions. This book closely analyses the diverse content and practices of amateur Filipino YouTubers, exposing and problematising the dynamics of brokering the contested aspirational logics of beauty and selfhood, interracial relationships, world-class labour, and progressive governance in a digital sphere.

Social media platforms have been pivotal in redefining the conduct of contemporary society. Amid the proliferation of a range of new and ubiquitous online platforms, YouTube, a video-based platform, remains a key driver in the democratisation of creative, playful, vernacular, intimate, as well as political expressions. As a critical node of contemporary communication and digital cultures, its steady uptake and appropriation in a social media-savvy nation such as the Philippines requires a critical examination of its role in the continued reconstruction of identities, communities, and broader social institutions. This book closely analyses the diverse content and practices of amateur Filipino YouTubers, exposing and problematising the dynamics of brokering the contested aspirational logics of beauty and selfhood, interracial relationships, world-class labour, and progressive governance in a digital sphere. Ultimately, Philippine Digital Cultures: Brokerage Dynamics on YouTube offers a fresh, compelling, and nuanced account of YouTube as an important site for the mediation of culture, economy, and politics in Philippine postcolonial modernity amid rapid economic globalisation and digitalisation.

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—bring about unique modes of sociality and surveillance of care. In doing so, this paper complicates established viewership models of LP, exploring how their manifestation in Manila gives rise to a particular type of Filipino sense of play.