Decorated Duterte: Digital Objects and the Crisis of Martial Law History in the Philippines

McKay

doi:10.3828/mlo.v0i0.316

Decorated Duterte: Digital Objects and the Crisis of Martial Law History in the Philippines

McKay

Authors

Deirdre McKay d.c.mckay@keele.ac.uk

Abstract

Much of the contemporary crisis in coming to terms with the past may have digital origins. We can see this crisis as engineered or assembled through a new series of historical actors: memes and posts on social media and, behind them, the work of trolls and paid influencers. These actors do not travel with first-person accounts of events so much as accumulate in the digital ephemera of daily lives and are then archived as the currency of digital capitalism, saved in individual online albums, on smart phones and then republished elsewhere. Their circulation and accumulation can be strategically directed by political actors who seek to overturn established historical consensus. Tracing the trajectory of memes featuring the Philippines’ President Duterte, this paper explores how digital objects have contributed to attempts to rework the history of the Martial Law era

Acceptance Date	May 11, 2020
Publication Date	Aug 4, 2020
Journal	Modern Languages Open
Print ISSN	2052-5397
Publisher	Liverpool University Press
DOI	https://doi.org/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.316
Publisher URL	https://www.modernlanguagesopen.org/articles/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.316/