FICS Student Papers
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Research outputs by graduate students and selected Capstone Project Reports by undergraduate students of the Faculty of Information and Communication Studies.
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ItemSailing Across Brackish Waters: An Exploratory Sequential Mixed-Method Study Situating Disaster Resilience through ICT-Based Management in Pamarawan Island, Malolos City( 2025)This exploratory sequential mixed-method study investigates disaster resilience through ICT-based management in Pamarawan Island, a coastal barangay in Malolos City. Despite the prevalence of disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM) research, disaster resilience in geographically isolated coastal communities remains underexplored. The study aimed to understand how residents perceive disasters, utilize strategies to enhance resilience, engage in DRR activities, and employ multimedia and ICT tools in disaster management. Anchored in social justice and resilience theories, data were collected through qualitative interviews and focus group discussions with 15 participants, followed by a quantitative survey of 50 residents. Findings reveal that multimedia tools like cellphones and televisions play a crucial role in disseminating information and encouraging participation in DRRM activities, although access and infrastructure limitations persist. The community perceives itself as resilient and relatively safe during disasters, yet geographic isolation, limited resources, power outages, and scarce emergency equipment constrain their capacity to fully implement DRRM protocols. The study underscores the need for tailored, ICT-enabled interventions, increased budget allocation, improved infrastructure, and inclusive policies that address the unique vulnerabilities of coastal barangays. This study contributes valuable insights into the intersection of disaster resilience, ICT management, and social justice in marginalized coastal settings.
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ItemSining Para sa Pagbabago: Examining How Sharing Protest Art Online Shapes the Attitudes and Actions of Young Filipinos Towards Socio-Political Advocacy Groups( 2025)With the internet’s unrelenting presence in people’s lives today, the distribution, reach, and accessibility of protest art has been changed irrevocably. In the evolving landscape of protest art and its audiences, this study endeavored to identify and discuss the societal implications of sharing digital protest artworks in online spaces, examining how they shape the attitudes and actions of young Filipino audiences towards socio-political advocacy groups. Through semi-structured, open-ended interviews and surveys with organization representatives, local artists, and audiences, the data used in this research were analyzed using the Grounded Theory approach by Glaser and Strauss. This research study culminated in a paradigm entitled “Effect Beyond The Screen” that explains the starting grounded theory, “The ‘Societal Implications of Sharing Digital Protest Art’ is dependent on the consideration of ‘Audience-Influencing Factors’ in the production of the artworks that serve as the ‘Means of Introduction’ which consequently restarts the process.” Even with the overarching positive sentiment on the efficacy of sharing digital protest art in shaping Filipino audiences’ attitudes and actions towards socio-political advocacy groups, this study found that while digital protest art is a valuable tool, it is most effective when integrated into a broader framework that emphasizes subsequent calls to action and offline engagement beyond digital activism. Awareness, engagement, and participation in digital protest artworks do not necessarily equate to actual, productive community engagement and collective action, as the outcome still relies heavily on the individual’s decisions.
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ItemA Home for Psychotic Depression: Building a Personal Knowledge Base for Meaning-Making in Obsidian( 2025)This project outlines the creation of a multimedia prototype for an interactive digital environment that supports meaning-making, particularly in the context of psychotic depression, where meaning-making is severely compromised. The prototype comes in the form of a personal knowledge base (PKB) that captures and explores situational meanings and facilitates assisted meaning-making. The PKB was produced through techniques adapted from personal knowledge management — such as Johnny.Decimal, the Slip-box Method, and Maps of Content — and insights formed from my lived experience with psychotic depression, including a private dataset containing my firsthand account of the condition and other personal information. The methodology employed for the project is an iterative design approach that employs Obsidian third-party plugins, CSS, JavaScript, and Python to extend the functionality of the default Obsidian vault into a PKB optimized for meaning-making. Each iteration was documented using a changelog with semantic versioning. The methodology is rooted in the proposed Multimedia Meaning-making Model for Psychotic Depression (M4PD), a novel integrative framework derived from Hyper-meaning (van Os, 2014), Kegan’s Theory of Meaning-making (Kegan et al., 1982; Kegan, 1994), and the Meaning Making Model (Park, 2022). The project spanned an estimated 1 year, with the latest version of the PKB at Version 2.2.0. The PKB has multiple features that collectively enable the streamlined capture and exploration of situational meanings — which are excessive in states of psychosis — and facilitate assisted meaning-making, which addresses the disruptions to global meaning caused by depression. It is to be noted that the PKB successfully produced a topological network of over 12,000 nodes, comprised of entries about psychotic depression and my personal life from 2018 to 2025, suggesting an emergent yet unrefined map of my meaning-making. The results presented in this project are part of an ongoing, larger effort to develop an interactive digital environment for supporting meaning-making. The project concludes with a call for a future product, unique enough to warrant its own designation — the Personal Meaning Base or PMB.
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ItemExploring Influences of Pet-Related Social Media Content on Perceptions of Pet Adoption( 2025-10-22)Despite the growing literature on social media use, the online presence of pets, and the increasing rates of pet ownership in the country, only limited studies analyze the effects of social media use on perceptions of pet adoption as a method of pet ownership, especially in the context of the Philippines. The study explored the influence of pet-related social media content on perceptions of pet adoption among past, current, and prospective pet owners in Metro Manila. Guided by the Uses and Gratification Theory (UGT), Focus Theory of Normative Conduct (FTNC), and Cultivation Theory (CT), the research examined how exposure to content, motivations, and social norms interact with practical barriers in shaping adoption perceptions. A descriptive-exploratory design was employed through an online survey administered to 154 respondents. Results of the study revealed that while respondents frequently encountered and engaged with pet-related content for emotional and informational gratifications, this reinforced favorable perceptions of pet adoption rather than direct adoption intent. Normative cues further sustained adoption as a socially desirable practice; however, practical barriers to pet adoption remained the most influential factor among respondents. Overall, the study demonstrated that social media plays a significant role in cultivating positive perceptions and reinforcing pet adoption as a cultural norm, but its capacity to influence adoption intent is limited without external support. These insights contribute to the growing body of literature on Philippine media studies by extending classical media effects theories into contemporary digital contexts.
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ItemWearable Futures Hackathon – Co-creating a Hybrid, Interdisciplinary Learning Experience( 2022-11-24)This paper is a personal reflection and autoethnographic account of the primary author's experience revolving around the participation in the Wearable Futures Hackathon course as a co-creator for the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) Bachelor of Arts in Multimedia Studies program (BAMS). It documents how his perceived participation evolved from being a consultant into co-creator of one of the Multimedia Studies course, the challenges he had to face reconciling the difference between the two, and how co-creation can possibly benefit the academe, the faculty, and the students as participants and as co-creators in developing engaging, innovative, and participatory workshops and classes, not only through online but also offline, first-person perspectives will be employed hereafter.