Rodrigo Duterte as Ideology: Academic vs. Social Media Myths and Representations and their Implications to Political Order

Abstract

Rodrigo Duterte is imaged as an ideology through narratives, texts, discourses and representations which emerge in a highly contentious discursive terrain. This paper places this in two domains, namely in academic theorizing and popular culture, particularly in social media, both of which are implicated in representational politics. Academic theorizing about Duterte attempts to be objective and scholarly, but is dominated by anti-Duterte sentiments that are mainly born from liberal and critical orientations. The pro-Duterte social media is not only anti-elite but also has an anti-intellectual orientation. Social media is an effective contrapuntal in painting academic theorizing as a weapon of the anti-Duterte elites. Written using narratives drawn from an auto-ethnographic account of this author, this paper first analyzes the academic and social media domains around which myths and representations about Rodrigo Duterte are produced. It concludes by drawing from the analysis the implications to ideological and discursive bases for the maintenance of political order in Philippine society, particularly on the role of leaders in the context of the country’s communitarian political culture.