The tale of an online mob #NachoDomingo

Katrina S.S.

I happened upon the case of Nacho Domingo too late. It was Sunday, September 29. I asked a friend who had posted about social media responsibility and online mobs what he was talking about, and he told me to do a Twitter search for his name.

It yielded little, though the few tweets that came up were ones of mourning and condolences, a lot of regret. By later in the day more and more tweets surfaced that were turning defensive: this is about frat culture, they said. The system is to blame for his death, many others said.

The blame game on Twitter seeped through the rest of the week, with some accounts coming out with names of “people who killed Nacho,” which just continued the cycle of blaming and shaming, bullying and mob rule that brought upon us this death to begin with.

READ ON…

NACHO, 22

sharing here katrina’s facebook posts on ignacio “nacho” domingo.  we didn’t know him personally, had not heard of him (yet–what a waste), this UP scholar and student leader, apparently a most promising and gifted young man, whose untimely and tragic death so crushed us that we haven’t been able to get it, him, out of our minds, needing to figure out what it was all about, wanting to understand why and how and who and when events escalated so quickly, to a point of no return.  this is neither to sensationalize the loss nor to intrude on the family’s privacy, rather, to shed light on, the better to grasp, what went wrong, and to beg that we all guard against it happening ever again.  then nacho would not have died in vain.

Katrina Stuart Santiago

2 October at 12:43

Those screencaps were released ANONYMOUSLY by a new (now deleted) Twitter account, and dated from two years ago. It was released Sept 25 (11:00AM) by an account called @rhosigrambles. By the afternoon UP ALYANSA (4:31PM) and KALikha: Kasama Ka sa Paglikha ng Arte at Literatura Para sa Bayan (7:49PM) released statements of condemnation.

By early morning of Sept 26 (1:08AM) the UP College of Mass Communication Student Council released a condemnation, promising accountability for any form of “impunity.” By the afternoon, STAND UP (4:20PM) called out the “offenders” for “bastardizing principles.” Students’ Rights and Welfare Philippines (9:35PM) followed suit talking about the “safety of our educational institutions” and stating “UP Sigma Rho Fraternity, particularly its members <name 1>, <name 2>, and <name 3>, who were PROVEN VIA SCREENSHOTS and testimonies to be involved in hazing, as well as sexual and derogatory remarks made on and regarding certain women, to reassess its reasons for existence, present themselves in investigations, hold itself accountable, and thus face the consequences of their actions.” (all caps mine)

By Sept 27 (4:34PM), the University of the Philippines Administration had announced that they were “investigating allegations” and have placed “suspects on preventive suspension” and “will file formal charges where there is evidence to support such a move.” The UP Diliman University Student Council (5:58PM) followed suit with its own statement talking about disciplinary action.

These official statements are all based on screencaps of a conversation from TWO YEARS AGO, released anonymously. A conversation that involved students who were being called “suspects,” and already penalized by the university with preventive suspension, with not enough evidence to file formal charges.

This was NOT just about social media lynch mobs. This was about institutions quickly and swiftly and thoughtlessly making decisions given those mobs. No one’s hands are clean. Certainly NOT the University’s, and NOT its organizations.

October 3

I have 122 screencaps as we speak, mining whatever is still left of tweets that were posted from Wednesday, Sept 25, to Sept 28 when he died, to the post-narratives since. I have gone back to all the statements that were posted. I’m told that before his death, the Mass Comm Student Council FB comments sections were terrible, but I missed that completely.

In fact, I missed this whole thing as it was happening — my Twitter network is obviously removed from it. But there was still enough to go back to, and while it takes time to find the right key words, once you find it, it’s a very depressing blackhole that proves why and how we have come to this point.

I have no time as of yet to write about this at length. But here’s a thought: the noise of groups and the social media mob, demanding quick action and condemnation, there is a downside to that. There is a massive problem with that, especially when we’re talking about private individuals, about REAL PEOPLE. Not everyone is Duterte. Not everyone is just operating with impunity and is a product of the macho-fascist rule. I don’t know why we even have to remind ourselves that.

A question: Where was hunos-dili in this case? When even the institutions did not practice restraint, did not spend some time to put things in perspective, did not even ask questions about whether or not responses are commensurate, or did not wonder about the possibility that these kids don’t even believe what they believed 2 years ago. When institutions are at the mercy of mob rule — who then is in control? Whose responsibility is it to make sure the kids are okay?

#StateU #SocialMediaCrisis #SocialMediaPH 
#LynchMobs #MobRule #CallOutCulture

Decision time on Marcos electoral protest

Tony La Viña

With the impending release by the Supreme Court sitting as Presidential Electoral Tribunal of its ruling on vice presidential candidate Bongbong Marcos’ electoral protest against Vice President Leni Robredo for the 2016 national elections, the nation waits anxiously for the PET to do its constitutional duty.

Much has happened and been said since Marcos lodged the electoral protest three years ago. Vice President Robredo and political allies have been subject to relentless attacks to discredit the opposition, including the filing of sedition charges against them. On the other hand, the Robredo camp is said to be prematurely claiming victory even as the PET has yet to announce any action on the Caguioa report. As early as July, Robredo’s camp was asking for an early resolution of the election protest on the ground that “the result of the revision, recount and reappreciation of the ballots clearly confirm the victory of protestee Robredo.”

At this point of the protest, it is fitting to recall the resolution of the PET on August 27, 2017 which paved the way for the recount.

Read on…

Politics, economics, rice

ORLANDO RONCESVALLES

The production, consumption, and importation of food (rice or grains) have posed contentious as well as analytically difficult issues even when economics was still in its infancy. In the early 1800s, David Ricardo came up with the idea of comparative advantage to explain why countries trade. On its face, it presented a paradox because comparative advantage suggested that a poor country (one endowed with limited technology) should export a good such as rice even if it didn’t have an absolute advantage in its production (it just needed to have a comparative advantage). Ricardo was also not one to advocate self-sufficiency as he was pretty much a proponent of free international trade. Today’s debate on the merits of rice tariffication presents conundrums and even unanswered questions, though the latter have perhaps more to do with politics than economics.

But even earlier, when economics was not yet a social science, kings and despots already knew that to survive insurrections, they made sure that the price of bread or grain (or any food staple) was affordable to the masses. The Roman poet (Juvenal) considered on or around 100 AD that political stability required whoever was in power to provide bread, as well as circuses! Forget the Romans. The Bible has its share of stories where kings had the burden of protecting their subjects from suffering in times of famine. Closer to home here in the Philippines, when the price of rice spiked in 2018 and became part of an inflation scare, there was a fair amount of wrangling on what to do.

The conventional wisdom today in economics, particularly in the textbooks on international economics, hasn’t changed much in the last two hundred years. Free trade, because it is voluntary and anchored on the concept of comparative advantage, was (and still is) a good thing. And yet, here we are in today’s age of wondrous innovations dubbed as the “fourth” industrial revolution, fulminating at the specter of rice prices remaining high for the consumer but falling to penury-inducing levels for rice farmers. What has gone wrong?

Read on…