Kapwa, Comparative Frustration, and Digital Interjection: A Conceptual Analysis of Filipino Comment Behavior in Global Social Media Spaces
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https://doi.org/10.65166/963tgj30关键词:
Filipino digital behavior, kapwa, social comparison, diaspora consciousness, symbolic participation, online commenting, civic frustration摘要
This paper examines a recurring pattern in global social media spaces: the visible participation of Filipino users in comment threads attached to international posts that do not directly involve the Philippines, often through comparison, humor, grievance, or civic frustration. Rather than dismissing this behavior as mere trolling or irrelevant online intrusion, the paper interprets it as a form of mediated comparative self-positioning. Using a conceptual and thematic review design, the study synthesizes scholarship on Filipino relational selfhood, social comparison and relative deprivation, diaspora and transnational embeddedness, symbolic participation in digital publics, and trolling or mediated identity performance. The analysis argues that Filipino interjection into unrelated international comment threads may be understood as a socially situated digital act shaped by five interacting forces: relational identity, comparative civic frustration, transnational connectedness, low-cost symbolic participation in visible online spaces, and identity performance under conditions of digital disinhibition. The paper further contends that such comments often carry collective and civic meaning, particularly when foreign public recognition or institutional support is read against perceived domestic inadequacies. In this sense, comment sections may function as informal sites where national self-evaluation and public dissatisfaction become legible in compressed digital form. The study concludes that the phenomenon is neither pure noise nor pure malice, but a behaviorally meaningful expression of identity, frustration, and symbolic public insertion under contemporary networked conditions. Recommendations are offered for future documentary qualitative analysis, cross-national comparison, and platform-sensitive research.
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