How does state rhetoric change as conflict intensifies against intrastate enemies? We forward the concept of narrative expansion and labeling, to analyze the escalatory transformation of conflict discourse by the Philippine state media. The data set includes 4,098 articles from the state’s official news agency, covering early attempts at reconciliation and the eventual failure of peace negotiations between the Philippine Government and the National Democratic Front (NDF). Analysis involves a mixed methods approach, combining computational network analytics of word networks with a qualitative interpretation of emergent themes. Results reveal a discursive shift emanating from the state’s mouthpiece, alongside the political deterioration of peace talks with the NDF. The state narrative initially expands to include not only conciliatory but also confrontational talk. Eventually combative talks dominate, including a shift in labeling the enemy as terrorist rather than rebel. Narrative expansion likewise refers to state news discursively increasing the number of social actors involved in the conflict as either enemy or ally. Our findings contribute to understanding how discursive shifts may move from conciliatory to hostile discourse in a protracted intrastate conflict.
The article examines the production of contested social representations of a Philippine religious ritual in online spaces using a mixed methods approach to semantic network analysis. Comments from the online media coverage of the 2019 Traslación were mined from the Facebook pages of the eight most popular Philippine media outlets. A semantic network consisting of collocation of frequently used words was generated using R and Gephi. Network analysis produced three word clusters highlighting bifurcations linguistically, in the use of Filipino or English, and substantively, in contested representations. Analysis of these themes reveals the centrality of discourses reifying the ritual as authentic expressions of faith. A minority of discourses reflect criticisms of the Traslación as idolatry. This reflects the dichotomy of discourses in the Traslación literature. The research demonstrates the relevance of social computing in the analysis of meanings of cultural phenomena across large populations.
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