Status : Verified
| Personal Name | Bauya, Rustom B. |
|---|---|
| Resource Title | Beyond Spectacles of Suffering: The Politics of Representational Justice in DSWD Digital Narratives |
| Date Issued | 14 April 2026 |
| Abstract | This study examines how beneficiaries of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) are represented in the Kwento ng Pag-asa at Pagbabago (KPAP) YouTube video series. It interrogates these representations through the framework of Representational Justice, focusing on the dimensions of agency, dignity, equity, and structural consciousness. Using a qualitative multimodal approach, the study analyzes selected KPAP episodes across narrative, visual, aural, and discursive frames to understand how meaning is constructed and regulated in state-produced digital storytelling. Findings reveal that KPAP operates through a coherent but tightly governed representational system that consistently affirms beneficiary dignity and avoids overtly exploitative portrayals. However, these ethical achievements remain circumscribed within a communicative logic oriented toward program justification and institutional legitimacy. Beneficiary narratives are curated as evidence of state effectiveness, resulting in constrained narrative agency, unequal distribution of voice and authorship, and limited articulation of the structural conditions of poverty. This mode of representation is best characterized as instrumental–legitimizing storytelling, in which stories function not only to humanize beneficiaries but also to validate institutional performance. Within this framework, beneficiaries occupy a dual position as both visible subjects of care and symbolic instruments of state legitimation. While recognition is present, participatory parity remains absent. The study argues that ethical storytelling, when decoupled from equitable narrative participation and structural critique, produces only partial alignment with Representational Justice. It contributes to scholarship on development communication by demonstrating how state-led digital narratives can simultaneously humanize and regulate, offering dignity without full representational autonomy and visibility without structural justi |
| Degree Course | Master of Arts in Media Studies - Film |
| Language | English |
| Keyword | DSWD Digital Narratives; Beneficiary Representation; State-Produced Communication; Critical Discourse Analysis; Narrative Analysis; Aural Analysis; Visual Analysis; Intermodal Analysis; Multimodal Analysis; Ethical Storytelling; Representational Justice |
| Material Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
Preliminary Pages
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Category : F - Regular work, i.e., it has no patentable invention or creation, the author does not wish for personal publication, there is no confidential information.
Access Permission : Open Access