Cheryll Soriano

• PhD, Communication and New Media
• Professor (Full) at De La Salle University

While bullying on social media among the youth remains a public health problem, there is little that we know about ways of dealing with bullying by disconnection. In this article, we build upon the concepts of disconnective practice (Light, 2014) and visibility (Brighenti, 2007) to explain the ways into which the youth deal with bullying on social...

Given the size of the platform economy and the intensity of climate hazards in the Philippines, there is a need establish a more nuanced understanding of how environmental factors shape the vulnerabilities and resilience of platform workers and to rethink platform design and policy, taking these risks into account.

The urgency and complexity of contemporary social justice issues facing the world today mean that activists, scholars, and storytellers need a readily available compendium of cutting-edge scholarship on media and social justice. This handbook represents the collective wisdom of more than 40 leading voices across positionalities and perspectives, ge...

Brokerage connects actors in a social structure to facilitate access, exchange and flow of goods, information, opportunities, or knowledge. Brokers are socially embedded in communities and strategically situated between disparate groups, and they generate value through bridging connections and mediating social, political, and economic interactions....

A crucial feature underpinning labour platforms that attract vast numbers of workers globally are artificial intelligence and algorithmic systems that perform labour management roles. Research in human-machine communication (HMC) suggests that technologies endowed with human social cues are perceived as distinct ‘social actors,’ evoking responses f...

In this introductory section of the special issue titled “Beyond the Tropicalization of Concepts: Theorizing Digital Realities With and From the Global South,” the editors present a critical examination of the unquestioned adoption of theoretical frameworks from dominant regions of power and knowledge in the context of the Global South. This proces...

Amid a standstill in the economy and physical mobility restrictions, many organizations were compelled to shift work processes online in an attempt to restore a semblance of normalcy. This essay reflects on this increased interaction between organizations, work, and communication technology in the context of covid-19. The piece explores the role of...

This chapter examines emerging class formation and relations among cloudworkers as well as its underlying institutional structures. As empirical anchor, the chapter focuses on the Philippines, which has actively embraced platform labor with millions of Filipino workers obtaining gigs from cloudwork platforms. I explore emerging class relations amon...

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 contemp...

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 contemp...

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 contemp...

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 contemp...

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 contemp...

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 contemp...

This chapter underscores the brokering of ideal and dominant discourses of femininity among Filipina YouTubers. Applying the concept of “cultural whitening” and a postfeminist critique, it analyses the diverse affective, creative and ambivalent tactics performed by YouTubers. It first situates the examination of YouTubers’ imaginaries of standard f...

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 contemp...

While the early years of the gig economy in the Philippines were seen as a promise for job generation, there has been a surge of labour unrest among workers in the ride-hailing and delivery sectors of the platform economy over the past year. These mobilizations magnify Fairwork Philippines’ 2022 findings that the conditions of labour in the Philip...

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 contemp...

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 contemp...

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 contemp...

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 contemp...

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 contemp...

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 contemp...

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 contemp...

This 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 socio-techni...

This 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 sociotechnic...

Understanding the embedded and disembedded, material and immaterial, territorialized and deterritorialized natures of digital work. Many jobs today can be done from anywhere. Digital technology and widespread internet connectivity allow almost anyone, anywhere, to connect to anyone else to communicate and exchange files, data, video, and audio. In...

We propose to consider "fake news" as a genre with its own conventions and narrative devices dependent on those of mainstream journalism. Departing from genre theory, "culture jamming" practice and Barnhurst and Nerone's (2002) concept of journalist modernism rooted in Louis Althusser's idea of form as the principal expression of ideology, we inten...

We propose to consider “fake news” as a genre with its own conventions and narrative devices dependent on those of mainstream journalism. Departing from genre theory, “culture jamming” practice and Barnhurst and Nerone’s (2002) concept of journalist modernism rooted in Louis Althusser’s idea of form as the principal expression of ideology, we inten...

Hegemonic Open Science, emergent from the circuits of knowledge production in the Global North and serving the economic interests of platform capitalism, systematically erase the voices of the subaltern margins from the Global South and the Southern margins inhabiting the North. Framed within an overarching emancipatory narrative of creating access...

Drawing from experience of platform labor in one of the largest labor supplying countries, the Philippines, the paper demonstrates the role of an emerging labor category – that of digital labor influencers – who promote the viability of platform labor locally amid its precarious and ambiguous conditions. Through participant observation in Facebook...

The open science (OS) movement has advocated for increased transparency in certain aspects of research. Communication is taking its first steps towards OS as some journals have adopted OS guidelines codified by another discipline. We find this pursuit troubling as OS prioritizes openness while insufficiently addressing essential ethical principles:...

The open science (OS) movement has advocated for increased transparency in certain aspects of research. Communication is taking its first steps toward OS as some journals have adopted OS guidelines codified by another discipline. We find this pursuit troubling as OS prioritizes openness while insufficiently addressing essential ethical principles:...

The open science (OS) movement has advocated for increased transparency in certain aspects of research. Communication is taking its first steps toward OS as some journals have adopted OS guidelines codified by another discipline. We find this pursuit troubling as OS prioritizes openness while insufficiently addressing essential ethical principles:...

This article interrogates political brokerage on YouTube by examining the platform’s role in the construction of political discourses and in configuring the action of a new genre of political actors advancing a political agenda through historical revisionism. Using assemblage theory and drawing from technography (Bucher, 2018), we propose the conce...

This article interrogates political brokerage on YouTube by examining the platform’s role in the construction of political discourses and in configuring the action of a new genre of political actors advancing a political agenda through historical revisionism. Using assemblage theory and drawing from technography, we propose the concept of “networke...

This special issue brings together six research articles that speak to the dynamics of digital communication in the Philippines, a country firmly located in the global geography of the digital economy and an early adopter and innovator in mobile communication. Increasingly, the rise of digital platforms is spurring on new business models and applic...

This special issue brings together six research articles that speak to the dynamics of digital communication in the Philippines, a country firmly located in the global geography of the digital economy and an early adopter and innovator in mobile communication. Increasingly, the rise of digital platforms is spurring on new business models and applic...

This article examines and theorises the relationships across three distinct forms of labour brokerage emerging in the digital platform labour economy: platform intermediation, ‘skill-making’, and ‘re-outsourcing’. Drawing from a four-year digital ethnography on online freelancing and platform labour in the Philippines, one of the largest labour sup...

This article examines and theorises the relationships across three distinct forms of labour brokerage emerging in the digital platform labour economy: platform intermediation, ‘skill-making’, and ‘re-outsourcing’. Drawing from a 4-year digital ethnography on online freelancing and platform labour in the Philippines, one of the largest labour supply...

In the Philippines, local governments are at the frontline of addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. While the national government has focused on building the capacities of the health system, mobilizing national resources, and issuing policies, interpreting and implementing actual measures have been largely left at the hands of local government units. T...

Research on digital worker experiences have shed light on the problematic realities of digital labor, which include increasing levels of stress and anxiety over financial and career instability, physical exhaustion, and isolation - all of which underscore the precarity that belie the optimistic facade of labor under the new economy. Given the multi...

This paper re-examines YouTube as a site of feminine, networked, and intimate sociality among Filipino women online. We unpack this by identifying how commenters on YouTube engage with the performativity of an intimate relationship between a Filipina and her foreign husband on YouTube. Extending Mina Roces’ concept of ‘local sisterhood’ in the digi...

This paper re-examines YouTube as a site of feminine, networked, and intimate sociality among Filipino women online. We unpack this by identifying how commenters on YouTube engage with the performativity of an intimate relationship between a Filipina and her foreign husband on YouTube. Extending Mina Roces’ concept of ‘local sisterhood’ in the digi...

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 si...

This chapter offers an exploratory analysis of data journalism experiences of four of the most established and largest news organizations in the Philippines. The research examines how these local news organizations adopted data journalism into their traditional practice beginning in the 1990s when use of the internet likewise started. The paper tra...

Building on scholarly explorations of the nuances of labor conditions in emerging knowledge economies in the Global South and the glocalization of the digital labor market, this paper examines how coworking spaces in the Philippines are designed and organized. In particular, we explore the role that these alternative workspaces take in addressing t...

Building on scholarly explorations on the nuances of labor conditions in emerging knowledge economies in the Global South and the glocalization of the digital labor market, this paper examines how coworking spaces in Philippines are designed and organized. In particular, we explore the role that these alternative workspaces take in addressing the u...

This paper attempts to avoid both overly optimistic and pessimistic accounts of the ‘on-demand’ global economy and of ‘platform labor’ in the Global South. It instead considers both how the socio-cultural and economic complexities of the worker environment might drive the attractiveness of this form of labor and how histories of colonialism might m...

The increasing networked connectivity and affordability of technology facilitated the rise of digitally-mediated service work. Workers, mostly located in the Global South, can now directly obtain ‘gigs’ through online labor platforms and microwork intermediaries such as Upwork and Onlinejobs.ph. Within the Philippine digital labor economy, we see a...

As part of a broader project that seeks to investigate the brokering of digitally-mediated intimacies through matchmaking platforms and social media channels, this paper unpacks the formation of ‘online sisterhood’ in a postcolonial intimate public, as evinced in the comments of viewers on selected YouTube videos of Rhaze, a Filipina YouTuber who i...

Background: As soon as President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office in 2016, the Philippine government launched a nationwide antidrug campaign based on enforcement-led anti-illegal drugs policies primarily implemented by the national police. This was followed by a spate of killings resulting from both acknowledged police operations and by unidentified...

News media’s construction of crime and drugs can shape and change public perceptions and influence popular acceptance of policy and state responses. In this way, media, through selection of sources and framing of narratives, act as important agents of social control, either independently or indirectly by state actors. This article examines how the...

Over the past decade, advancements in digital technologies have set the stage for corporations in the Global North to drive down their labour costs by outsourcing work to the Global South. This includes using digital labor platforms that attract digital workers from across age groups, geographic location, and professional or educational backgrounds...

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 a...

The published article may be found in: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781136207129/chapters/10.4324/9780203094440-38

The paper examines the media’s role in shaping, crystallizing and amplifying a state­driven discourse of fear of illegal drug use, crime, and dehumanization of drug users. Drawing from a discourse analysis of news reports about the killings connected to the Philippine government’s campaign against illegal drugs, the paper argues that privileging a...

The last few years have seen an explosion in data-driven journalism practice in the global South. As data journalism becomes more prevalent in professional journalism practice in the Philippines, it is increasingly important to capture the experience of local news organizations as they adapt and transition towards this emerging trend. The purpose o...

This article examines the translocal context of emerging information and communication technology (ICT) for the "have-less," with a focus on public access ICT that emerged to become popular in low-income communities in the Philippines: the pisonet (one-peso net). Drawing from two years of in-depth interviews and participant observation in slum comm...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, it explores the extent to which diversity of connectivity or the connection through multiple internet access points may facilitate online privacy behavior. Second, it explains the diversity of connectivity-online privacy behavior link in terms of information literacy. Design/methodology/approa...

This article examines how privacy is understood, lived, and negotiated by youth users of information and communication technology (ICT) in slum communities in the Philippines. In the context of shared and public access arrangements prevalent in many low-income communities in the Global South, the article discusses the intersections of space, techno...

This article analyzes the transmedia strategies of three ethnic minority activist organizations in the Philippines: Cordillera Peoples Alliance, Tebtebba, and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The fieldwork entailed interviews with leaders of these organizations and their media teams, scholars who study these movements, and social commentators. Th...

This study explores the nature and promise of citizen engagement in Twitter during calamities, specifically in the context of typhoon Yolanda. Through topic modeling and content analysis, the article explores the “acts of civic engagement” expressed in disaster tweets and how the character of the tweets changed over a five-month period. The article...

In exploring the relationship between advertising and cultural rituals, this chapter examines how Philippine television advertisements for mobile technology products and services use the frame of ritual and mobilize the various dimensions of kapwa (connecting to significant others) to appeal to consumers. We question how advertisements reify the im...

In this paper, we present a framework that combines automatic and manual approaches to discover themes in disaster-related tweets. As case study, we decided to focus on tweets related to typhoon Haiyan, which caused billions of dollars in damages. We collected tweets from November 2013 to March 2014 and used the local typhoon name "Yolanda" as the...

In the Philippines, mobile phones are actively used across the population, including the large numbers of Filipino citizens working abroad, a majority of them women. This article investigates how television advertising of mobile phones engages culturally relevant roles of mothers to attract women as technology consumers. Using semiotic analysis, th...

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, mino...

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 a...

This chapter explores the implications of mobile technologies on gender through the lens of gender rituals. While maintaining social order and social roles, rituals also legitimate key category differences, ideologies, and inequalities. The increasing convergence of media and content in mobile devices, and the blurring of the spaces for work, famil...

Purpose – This longitudinal study aims to analyze the use of websites by a sample of 78 corporations and non‐profits five years apart. In particular, it studies organizational use of interactive and social media features and use of web sites for building relationships with six stakeholder publics. Design/methodology/approach – The authors studied...

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...

The online communicative environment is expected to revolutionize political discourse as it expands to cover underrepresented groups and ideas. In this platform, marginalized groups such as indigenous communities from the developing world can articulate claims, strategically mobilize and participate in the forms of meaning-making that constitute th...

The opportunities that the Internet brings for civil society groups, from information dissemination to deliberation and from service delivery to mobilization have led scholars to anticipate it to be a critical resource for communication and collaboration with its stakeholders. However, such studies on the breadth and level of use remain limited, mo...

Applying the 'Rural Livelihoods' framework of analysis, this study explores the link between information and communication technologies (ICTs) and rural poverty reduction by analyzing the role of community telecenters in enhancing the livelihood strategies of rural poor households. The 'Rural Livelihoods' framework argues that interventions that pl...

Given the experience the Philippines has had extending, via mobile telephony, financial and other services to people traditionally excluded, there is a need to identify the underlining factors behind, and current reality of, m-Banking and similar services in the country. This experience and some lessons learned from it are detailed in this report.