Uncovering Political Agendas: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Philippine Government Agencies’ Websites

Proponent/s Name/s (Last Name, First Name, Middle Initial)

Giulia Renee B. Singson, De La Salle University, ManilaFollow
Justine Gabrielle L. Yu, De La Salle University, ManilaFollow
Julia Cailean G. Dueñas, De La Salle University, ManilaFollow
Charlaine G. Alodaga, De La Salle University, ManilaFollow

Document Types

Paper Presentation

School Name

De La Salle University, Manila

Track or Strand

Humanities and Social Science (HUMSS)

Research Advisor (Last Name, First Name, Middle Initial)

Miranda, Janeson, M.

Start Date

25-6-2025 1:00 PM

End Date

25-6-2025 2:30 PM

Zoom Link/ Room Assignment

https://zoom.us/j/91582616739 / Meeting ID: 915 8261 6739

Abstract/Executive Summary

The role of websites in communicating government services and updates to constituents is paramount since they can serve as dependable hubs of critical information. However, since these are government websites, there may be politics behind their visual and textual contents that need to be uncovered. Yet, there has been a dearth of studies, especially in the Philippine context, that scrutinized the sociopolitical forces that are at play in the production of these website contents. Hence, in this study, we attempted to continue seamlessly meshing the critical discourse analysis framework of Fairclough with a multimodal analytical model in dissecting the top five Philippine government websites. For six weeks, we recorded the homepages of the websites by taking note of their textual and non-textual elements. Our analysis revealed the following emerging themes: the agencies’ official colors and logos have been used in the majority of the websites’ homepages to attain harmonization of each agency’s visual branding; headlines and other texts have been exploited to bolster the administration’s appeal (e.g., deliberate use of acronyms such as “Bawat Buhay Mahalaga” for BBM); marginalized sectors and issues have been on the periphery of the websites’ focal interests; and there has been an implicit discrepancy of the websites’ depiction of sociopolitical happenings from the local realities. Our findings are significant in advancing the discourse on creating systematic means of unveiling the sociopolitical forces behind websites and other multimodal online content.

Keywords

government websites; MCDA; agencies’ agendas; social and political realities

Research Theme (for Paper Presentation and Poster Presentation submissions only)

Media and Philippine Studies (MPS)

Initial Consent for Publication

no

Statement of Originality

yes