Authentic, Approachable, and Average: A Digital Visual Ethnography of Pro-Marcos TikTok Content
摘要
On May 9, 2022, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. won the 2022 Philippine national election at the mandate of 31 million Filipinos. Mounted largely on social media, Marcos’ campaign captured the imagination of supporters despite his family’s contested legacy of authoritarian politics. This chapter looks into how Marcos supporters used video-based social media platform TikTok to advance pro-Marcos narratives. Drawing from a visual ethnographic framework, we identified visual and audio conventions of high-engagement pro-Marcos TikTok videos, and discursively analyzed the pro-Marcos messages they successfully disseminated into the narrative landscape. Through leveraging the platform vernacular of intimacy, relatability, and unpolished, homemade media production, TikTok creators portrayed Marcos as authentic, approachable, and average, instead of formal, erudite, and elite. Our research explores how visual research methodologies can be applied to emerging technologies like TikTok, and concludes that these frameworks will prove useful in understanding contemporary digital cultures and their impact in real-world politics and society.