Mediatization calls for a critical examination of the changes in communication and media, and culture and society. Mathiesen argues that contemporary society is shaped by the synopticon, where media empowers a ‘Viewer Society.’ Today, new media have become a marketplace of ideas where the public can discuss policies and express their criticisms of the government, suggesting progress on how civil society demands government accountability, where surveillance plays a key role. Inspired by a Foucauldian theory of power, I investigated the changing demand for government accountability among youth-led CSOs in the Philippines and argued that they create a remarkable influence by navigating the complexities of media logics today. I used a synchronous approach to mediatization research through digital ethnography to study this media wave. I observed 30 youth-led CSOs on their Facebook Pages segmented into batches. Each batch has five CSOs observed daily for 30 days, totaling 65 days of observation altogether. At least one CSO from a batch was probed through an interview. The findings reveal that the CSOs’ operations are unfinished in the fourth media wave, compelling them to abide by media logics. As the media themselves today, their counter-surveillance modus operandi is digital influence advocacy and journalism. In a Foucauldian modern synopticon, new media are tools of power for CSOs to insinuate to the government that they are being watched, imposing greater pressure for accountability. Findings reveal that a discursive approach can draw practical implications for how CSOs in political spaces can enact their agency. Ultimately, I presented criticisms of short-term digital ethnography and argued its congruence with mediatization research.

Sa Pagdapo’t Paglipad is a personal documentary film that explores grief, memory, and womanhood within a Filipino family, focusing on women mourning the loss of a maternal figure. Rooted in the filmmaker’s personal experience of maternal loss, the project draws on Dennis Klass’s Continuing Bonds Theory and Robert Neimeyer’s Meaning Reconstruction to examine how emotional and symbolic connections with the deceased endure over time. Informed by feminist film theory and Deleuze’s concept of time-image cinema, the film uses nonlinear and contemplative vignettes—including archival footage—to center women’s voices and challenge traditional cinematic portrayals and gendered expectations of grief. This documentary contributes to grief studies by reclaiming female mourning as a space for narrative, emotional, and political agency.

Furthermore, the film contributes to Philippine cinema by expanding documentary practices rooted in personal and intergenerational storytelling. It highlights underrepresented narratives of female grief and foregrounds women's role as memory-keepers and emotional anchors in Filipino mourning culture.

Queer identities continue to be marginalized in online video gaming spaces due in part to their lack of visibility in online gaming communities and representation in video games. The rise of OhMyV33nus, a popular queer professional esports player and video game content creator, and her performance of her gender through her video game content could shed light on how queer people queer online gaming spaces and their play. The study explores the connection between online self-presentation, particularly the performance of gender, and the affordances of video games and social media platforms. Specifically, it examines how queerness is performed and negotiated in the case of OhMyV33nus’s YouTube channel. The study employs a methodology of single case study and multimodal textual analysis guided by the concepts of Online Self-Presentation (Goffman, 1956), Gender Performativity (Butler, 1999), and Affordances (Gibson, 1979). Findings show that OhMyV33nus utilizes various strategies and the different dimensions of her YouTube content to perform and negotiate her queerness. The study reflected how gender performance could be observed on YouTube in varying degrees based on the genre of the game, genre of the video, and the type of media content.

Cornelio, C.J.M. (2022). A Preliminary Review of the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) Strategies of the Philippine Department of Health (DOH) during the First Six Months of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Unpublished Bachelor’s Thesis,
University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication.

This study aimed to describe how the Philippine Department of Health (DOH) communicated COVID-19 risks and the government’s response during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) framework of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the study surfaced the different themes in the press briefings of the DOH, and the role of the spokesperson in communicating risk and government response strategies. A sample of 19 press briefings, across the three stages of Preparation, Initial Event, and Maintenance, were collated and analyzed to accomplish the different objectives. The findings of the study have shown that discussions of crisis magnitude (active cases, recoveries, and deaths), presentations of government response, and personal and community response activities were dominant themes in these press briefings. Spokesperson behavior and communication approaches have also been found to make quantitative and qualitative differences in the communication of risk and government response. This study has also shown the potential for the use of government press briefings as a unit of analysis in understanding government as a mediator of information.

Sakaling Malimutan Kita is a drama centered on Angelo as he undergoes a journey of healing by returning for the last time to see his estranged father, Mando, who recently passed away. Through this passage, the film places the main character in an emotional turmoil of also going back to the memories that he last shared with his father as he finally moves forward from the pain caused by the unexplained absence of Mando in his life. Utilizing a fragmented structure and the theory of ‘Reconstructive memory’, the film places the audience in the unreliability of memories and how the perceived truth based on a memory created through pain, clashes with the truth that is supported by a tangible proof.

The film explores the unreliability of memories but also takes a deeper look on how it can be important for a person’s process of healing.