Online Communication and Social Construction of Reality on Disaster

Abstract

Human interaction produces a shared reality that is “subjectively meaningful and objectively factual.” This dissertation investigated the online communication and construction of social reality on disaster through the lens of Socio-Cultural Tradition which claims that communication is viewed as the creation and enactment of social reality. That is, as people talk, they collectively “co-construct their own social worlds.” Specifically, the study looked into the local government unit’s (LGU) online communication practices, the online discourse that arise from the LGU’s disaster communication, what the online communication reveals about disaster, and the social construction of reality on disaster.

Through the LGU’s official social media platform, which is publicly accessible and the primary online resource in information dissemination during the first six months of COVID-19 in the Philippines, the posts and comments used in the discourse were carefully examined. A qualitative approach particularly content analysis and thematic analysis was utilized to explore the meanings embedded in the online posts and texts. Top-down online communication expressed the planning, monitoring, implementation and collaborative efforts of the local government while the online discourse related to disaster communication revealed expression of gratitude, acknowledged the efforts of stakeholders and examined the strategic plan of the local government among others. Online communication revealed that disaster is a construct that converges stakeholders, connects people together and strengthens community resilience. The permanence of language and its detachability from the “here and now” permeates the reconstruction of subjectivity that influences conversations and narratives in online communication.