The Social Construction of Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s Visit to UPLB: Thematic Analysis of Facebook Posts Associated with #DuterteVisitsUPLB

The run-up to the last Philippine national elections saw several political candidates visit colleges and universities. One of the most notable visits was Rodrigo Duterte‟s visit to the University of the Philippines Los Baños and the disrespect he allegedly received from at least one student. The days succeeding the visit, dubbed by some as the “Duterte – VS- UPLB War”, was marked with numerous comments in various social media regarding the event and its consequences from various stakeholders. This study aimed to describe the different themes of comments produced by Facebook users regarding the event with the aim of describing the potential social reality which can be constructed by those who would make use of the hashtag to read about, and make sense of, the event. All publicly-viewable posts in Facebook bearing the #DuterteVisitsUPLB hashtag were obtained and subjected to thematic analysis. The results showed that the Facebook comments associated with the hashtag are mixed. Six major categories containing a total of 53 themes were identified. Results point to a potential socially- constructed reality of the event where the narrative of a champion of the people arriving at UPLB only to be met with morally-deficient students which the people‟s champion eventually forgave is salient. This narrative, however, is fraught with allegations of media irresponsibility, blind fanaticism, and contestations of the identity of the righteous and the immoral. Other observations and reflections of the authors are also presented in the study.

Keywords: UPLB, Social Media, Duterte, Facebook, Thematic Analysis