Voices and noises from the grassroots: Discourses of people-centered development and the kidapawan massacre coverage of the Philippine news media
List of Authors
  • Julius Cesar Rosales Pascual

Keyword
  • Media representations, social development, People-Centered Development (PCD), profit-centered development, Communication and Social Development (CSD)

Abstract
  • This study explores the discourses of social development (i.e., people-centered) in the Kidapawan Massacre coverage of the Philippine news media. Specifically, this examines how media texts and talks represented the farmer-victims within the context of development. This researcher employs van Dijk’s (1998) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of selected tabloid news articles, broadsheet opinion columns, online alternative opinion columns, television documentaries, and television-radio news coverage of the stories of conflict between the oppressed and marginalised farmers and the powerful and controlling government. This critical research leads to the way of thinking that because of the latter’s inaction and the media’s neoliberal-capitalistic ideology, the former’s plight were overlooked and silenced. In this elite-dominated Philippine society, as well as in the Asia-Pacific, discourses of profit-centered development are more hegemonic compared to its counterpart that were relatively scant and torpid. Hence, the conceptualization of an alternative model, that is Communication and Social Development (CSD).

Reference
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