Social Media to Social Movements: Facebook as a Catalyst for the Filipino Youth to Join the Million People March

Opinion, J.B. (2015). Social media to social movements: Facebook as a catalyst for the Filipino youth to join the Million People March. Unpublished Undergraduate Thesis. University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication.

ABSTRACT

This study examined how people read social media to make them act. It specifically looked into how the male Filipino youth (ages 17-24 years old) interpreted Facebook posts in order for them to join the Million People March (MPM) last August 2013 and related anti-corruption activities afterwards. Its main objective is to analyze Facebook posts during the MPM-hype and how Facebook users consumed MPM-related posts to be involved in the movement. The study used Saussure's semiotic analysis to derive meaning from Facebook texts as well as Stuart Hall's encoding and decoding theory to analyze how the youth read Facebook posts as they decode them according to their own cultural biases. The researcher used non-probability sampling and focused interviews to gather data, particularly through the purposive sampling of MPM-related Facebook posts and interviewing eight (8) respondents as case studies. The researcher discovered that Facebook was mainly significant in moving the Filipino youth to join the Million People March. However, Facebook alone was not the sole reason for their attendance as several factors influenced them to join protest activities such as this.

KEYWORDS: Social movements, Facebook, Social media, Million People March, Activism

E-mail benedictopinion@gmail.com for a copy of this thesis.