EDITORIAL| Political Awareness in this Time of the Pandemic

EDITORIAL| Political Awareness in this Time of the Pandemic

As the famous quote states, "Fake it 'till you make it," you can never fake the reality that Filipinos are unaware, misinformed, but contented with what they know about Philippine politics. In this pandemic, political awareness is a significant threat to politicians, for this could raise the democracy we should always practice.

Illustrated by Christian Hulipas

Political awareness refers to one's sensitivity to public policy, government, politicians, or organizations. In its simplest form, political awareness means you know what is happening around you politically.

People may have put off the idea of being politically aware and consider those who are loud to express their political biases using fallacies in a discussion or a debate. You may talk a lot about your favorite politician, and that will never make you someone aware. Hence, you are just a fanatic.

• SOCIAL MEDIA AS A MEDIUM OF PUBLIC OPINION

While experiencing the horrors of the pandemic, physical newspapers are slowly dying, and some media companies have switched to publishing online articles.

GlobalWebIndex shows that Filipino residents spent around 4 hours on social media channels. There is no way a netizen can skip a politically related post because they are everywhere!

The majority of 80% of all internet users, according to TechJury, are engaged in social media. But if social media is the medium, who sets the mode of public opinion?

• TROLLS THAT KEEP ON TROLLING

Trolls are people behind pseudonym accounts who wave the administration's flag with pride and attack the opposition leaders without revealing their real identity to the public. These trolls set the mode on where to put their grudges and often mislead the people with their biased inputs.

The concept of troll is not synonymous with someone who has an opposite belief from you. Most people label each other trolls when they're opposed to the presented idea during a heated argument. To be politically aware, you must know who's knowledgeable and who's pretending to be one.

• ONE FALLACY TO ANOTHER

Fallacy, according to Oxford Languages, is faulty reasoning. The conversation given above is a fallacy after Fallacy. If we are going to resort to Fallacy at all times, then we will never reach the goal of making the Philippines the better place for every Filipino.

One example of Fallacy visible to social media is Ad Hominem or the argument against the person. It is never healthy to debate publicly on the comment section whenever a political post appears on your Facebook newsfeed. Instead, it only promotes chaos when one attacks the other person viciously, and the main issue is out of the radar.

We are not that underprivileged, unlike before. Internet is within reach of the majority of humankind. It should not be a burden to practice the proper way of debating without sorting to personal attacks, topic diversion, or worse, using your religion as a shield of weak reasoning.

• HOSPITALITY TO SELECTED POLITICAL HISTORY

To know your country is to learn its history. This practice is common to Filipinos since we're learning about the history of the Philippines, especially in politics. However, we also practice our common trait into being politically aware – hospitality.

Filipinos are hospitable. You can read and hear it everywhere. The problem of applying hospitality to politics is how we easily accept unverified information about our country's political history.

We quickly say yes if numbers are present that you didn't bother to verify. We agree because someone quoted a name unknown to many. We pick our side of history depending on what kind of environment influences us.

Gather facts to have a better understanding. There is no black vs. white situation. People of the Philippines should be in the Gray area of politics.

• TO MY FELLOW FILIPINOS

Political awareness can be our greatest weapon towards fighting our right to vote. Voting who will be the next leaders of our country is choosing who can handle even the worst situations our country could experience, re: Pandemic.

Be politically aware of knowing where to cast your votes in 2022. For our right to vote empowers democracy.