The Philippine Online Chronicles

Anticipation for the 2010 elections has brought issues like charter change and political corruption to the fore, as well as questions about democracy and whether it exists in the Philippines outside of theory. Mainstream media has its scopes set on poll automation, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's movements and the early ad campaigns of several presidential hopefuls.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that one of the side effects of the 2010 excitement is the birth of a variety of advocacy groups addressing the need for change in the Philippine political landscape.

Historically, such groups have always been formed in the midst of political and social tension. The groups that come forward in the shadow of 2010, however, have one common resource that they exploit as much as they can – the Internet.

Propaganda and networking

One of such movements is the Kaya Natin! Movement for Good Governance and Ethical Leadership which was founded only a year ago.

Its official website is a diverse and daily-updated collection of news bites and writings from Pampanga governor Ed Panlilio, Isabela governor Grace Padaca, Harvey Keh of the Ateneo de Manila University School of Government, and others.

On the Internet, the group heads have a space to articulate their ideas of “transparency, social accountability, people empowerment and electoral reforms.” They blog about it, link them to a centralized venue, and encourage discussion of them in the forums.

Putting their advocacy up on the web has also made it easier for groups to attract members.

Kaya Natin! is far from the only group which employs blogs and networking sites like Twitter to reach Filipinos online.

The First Time Voter's Project was originally launched in 2001 in the wake of Edsa Dos. At the time they had a single Blogspot account to signal their presence online. The group revived the account when it was relaunched in 2006.

For the 2010 elections however, they went full force into creating a system of networking tools to keep tabs on members and activities that would span the Philippines, reaching far into cyberspace to encourage the Filipino youth to register in order to be able to vote.

Today, the project has accounts not only on Blogspot but Wordpress and Ning as well. They're on Plurk, Facebook and Google Groups. They have a meebo chatbox, a Google feedburner, and a blogroll that links to COMELEC, the Akbayan Political Party and related groups like Taskforce 2010. They have an online membership form that eliminates the need to approach an office or project representative to get involved.

Active online

One group that went so far as to wholly base its advocacy on the Internet is Youth Vote Philippines 2010. The group, which was founded in 2008, hosts events and forums in the offline world, but its real feature is a unique homepage that will track presidential candidates once the campaign season begins.

On the Youth Vote website, one will find a panel featuring all presidential candidates. Clicking on a photo brings you to a full resume of that candidate, with educational background, public service record and links to their official sites.

Once the election campaign goes into full swing, Youth Vote will aggregate articles about the candidates, particularly their activities pertaining to certain presidential issues.

The presidential issues are “critical issues a candidate will face and how these issues are addressed will reflect how far our country has to go in fulfilling the basic needs and rights of every Filipino.” They include the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, the ensuring of environmental sustainability, promotion of gender equality and achievement of universal primary education, among others.

Youth Vote will accumulate online articles that point to a candidate's efforts towards the achievement of these goals and display it on the website. This will be to “help you find as much information about your candidate so that you can make an informed choice come election day.”

The site also features an election countdown, and in the future will include polls, candidate wikis and blogs about the elections.

Going offline

Given the potential in the Internet, many advocacy groups that existed before the build-up to the 2010 elections are also moving to set an online presence for themselves.

For instance, the Urban Poor Associates which was established in 1992 for the protection of housing rights and the prevention of forced evictions and illegal demolitions now has a photoblog which also includes videos and documents about their progress. They can also be found on Flickr.

However, not all advocacy groups can be found on the Internet. Groups like Yes to Change! Or the Faith-based Congress Against Immoral Debts don't have websites at all. Others, like Kubol Pag-asa and the Black & White Movement, have websites or blogs, but either do not update regularly so the page becomes stagnant, or makes limited use of feedback or networking systems.

These groups campaign the old-fashioned way – by organizing events, attending forums and making appearances in the mainstream media.

Web-based groups do not discount the importance of mobilization efforts offline. To make the jump from advocating on the Internet to acting in the real world is what all online-based groups strive for, by calling on members to attend mass gatherings, or first-time voters to register and vote according to conscience, or poll watchers to take to heart what they read in their downloaded manuals.

The difference is the web makes reaching out to Filipinos easier and faster, with 20 million of them regularly going online and 51 percent of that number being avid users of networking sites.

Spreading a message through networks such as Facebook and Twitter rather than depending on a single source dishing out parcels of information ensures that more people receive the message, and are able to react to it, in a shorter time.

More importantly, individuals can dialogue among themselves on a broader platform than the sort allowed by the traditional media circuit of TV, radio and print. Clay Shirky refers to this as the “crazy change” in the global media landscape brought about by the Internet's increasingly social context.

With the speed and ease of expressing oneself or one's ideals on the Internet, it is no surprise that the center of political and social discourse is rapidly transferring from the mainstream media to cyberspace.

As mentioned in Philippine Internet Review: 10 Years of Internet History, “At this time and age, the size of an organization does not guarantee its success. The organization's achievement will depend on how fast its plans are implemented and how it makes use of the first-mover advantage.”

With the growing strength of digital media and with the online demographic turned sharply towards the youth, advocacy groups that want to have an impact cannot afford to underestimate the power of the web.

Photo from Cyril Cavalie on Flickr.