During Holy Week, I traveled to Batangas to accompany a close friend whose sister hadn’t returned to their hometown in eight years. Our journey from Davao City was long and exhausting – hours spent on crowded buses and jeepneys, shifting from one terminal to the next, until we finally hopped on a tricycle, bags in tow and shoulders aching. As we approached the sitio, we were welcomed by flashy tarpaulins and a sign saying, “Welcome to Sitio Bulacnin”. It was a surprise homecoming – my friend hadn’t told anyone they were coming back, so the tarpaulins that greeted us earlier were not from her family and relatives but by politicians running for local and national positions.
The faces of the politicians, both familiar and unfamiliar, lingered a little longer in mind. As I struggle to fit myself into the tricycle, three questions add to my discomfort from the sharp edge of a metal frame near my seat that keeps on jabbing my back each time we hit another crater in the road. In a mediatized world dominated by social media, are these tarpaulins still necessary? Why are so many youth leaders now aspiring to become local executives in Batangas? And perhaps most pressing of all – how will the youth choose to vote in the 2025 elections?
In today’s highly mediatized and post-truth society, digital spaces have become a suitable and fertile environment for disinformation and misinformation – carefully orchestrated by troll farms, anonymous users, hyperpartisan content creators, and ambitious politicians. These actors seek to control of the narrative, not by offering truth or public service, but by throwing unnecessary tirades, personal attacks, and falsified claims to manipulate public perception.
Politicians who are only driven more by a hunger for power and position than commitment to public service, thrive in this climate of information disorder. They monopolize and twist the truth to serve their own interests, using deception to protect what they have already stolen from us. In this way, they emerge victorious in the information warfare – building troll armies, funding online bots, and generating compelling but false stories using spliced videos and deepfakes that cast them as better options or saviors.
Despite our fragmented realities and diverse lived experiences as Filipinos, it is hope that binds us together. I was reminded of this during my visit in Batangas where a simple conversation about food opened a window into our shared yet varied cultural landscape. It was there that I learned binignit, a coconut-based soupy dessert that’s a staple in many parts of Mindanao during Holy Week, isn’t as common in Luzon. Instead, they have a similar dish, but made only with rolled rice flour balls. Even their version of dinuguan is similar, but cooked solely with pork belly, leaving out the pig’s innards that are traditionally used in other regions. These small but meaningful differences in our food traditions reflect the quiet, persistent thread of connection that runs through it all.
Seeing young, aspiring politicians stepping up to vie for local executive positions makes me hopeful. So does crediting the youth for the high turnout of votes during the 2025 midterm elections. I find hope, too, in the small but meaningful victories of Makabayan bloc candidates, who continue to run and serve the people despite limited machinery, funding, and media exposure compared to entrenched political dynasties. And there is a shared sense of hope in celebrating leaders like Bam Aquino, Kiko Pangilinan, Chel Diokno, Leila Delima, and others – lawmakers who have championed policies on education, agriculture, worker’s welfare, human rights, climate justice, gender equality, and more.
Refreshed from a trip – visiting old churches in Laguna and Quezon, and going out with newly found friends in the sitio – I returned home with a renewed sense of hope. I eased back into my daily routine and resumed facilitating my classes at the University. Before the quick break to allow our students to participate in the elections, we discussed “diwa” or collective consciousness in Filipino psychology. I reminded them of the collectivist nature of Filipinos and told them that when crafting messages – it is always shared, sensitive (to cultures and differences), and grounded in our diwa.
As we ended the class session, we read aloud the final slide of my presentation together: “Serve the people. For Mindanao and beyond.” I looked at each of them. In their eyes, I saw tiredness – masked by the enthusiasm in their voice. And I saw hope, too.
(Editor’s note: ‘”Mediatized” or ‘mediatization’ defined by communications Professor Iain Mc Pherson, PhD as “the powerful influences that media technologies and organizations exert on everyday life”. )
