Gold-Plated Progress: Exploring Stakeholder Discourses Surrounding Mining in Lobo

Baladad, A.K. and Quitalig, Q.C. (2016). Gold-Plated Progress: Exploring Stakeholder Discourses Surrounding Mining in Lobo, Unpublished Undergraduate Thesis, University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication.

Abstract:

This discourse study looked into whether the primary concerns of four stakeholders (i.e., directly affected residents (DAR), the local government unit (LGU), the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), and Mindoro Resources Ltd. (MRL) and their subsidiary Egerton Gold Phils., Inc. (EGPI)) converge toward a particular purpose in terms of the proposed gold-mining project in the Municipality of Lobo in Batangas. Specifically, it aimed to determine whether the dominant concerns mirrored those of the DAR. Its theoretical anchors are Stakeholder Analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, and Relational Control. Interviews and a focus group discussion were conducted to supplement the public documents released by the stakeholders. While the discourses converged in genre, the topics that were emphasized barely exhibited parallelism. Only the LGU and the company shared similar themes in their documents. Most believed the LGU and the MRL are the most powerful stakeholders, given their political authority and control over information. The stakeholders’ language in their documents exhibited patterns of dominance and competition, with some evidence of submission in the DAR’ s letters. Overall, while the general discourse centered on the triad of social acceptability, economic benefits, and environmental impact, the specific concerns of the DAR are not fully mirrored by the other three stakeholders.

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Key Words: discourse analysis, social power, relational control, discourse, multi-stakeholder communication, transactional communication