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AN ANALYSIS ON THE EFFECTIVITY OF SATIRE IN INCREASING FILIPINO

VOTER AWARENESS

Alcantara, Patrick
Bacanto, Nathaniel Ivan
Brito, James Patrick
Guco, Augustus Botrous
(2POL2)
University of Santo Tomas

INTRODUCTION
The advent of democracy in many nations throughout the 20th century saw the birth of styles
with which to elect leaders such as proportional representation and first-past-the-post system.
These elections then, ensuring that leaders will be voted in by the people and not merely
appointed to the position, saw the rise of a need for voter awareness, which is defined as the
ability to be aware of one’s right to vote, of the situation surrounding the candidate and the party
which the person will vote for, as well as the platforms that the candidate and the party proposes
for the populace.
One way in which this was done was through satire, defined by Elliot (2004) as a genre in
which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, with the intent of shaming
individuals, corporations, government or society itself, into improvement. Satire has long been
applied as a means of mocking ignorance, especially regarding matters such as politics, with
Bevare and Cerri (2006) stating that satire owes its staying power due to it satisfying a historical
need to debunk and ridicule leading figures. One of the oldest examples would come from the
time of ancient Greece with the plays of Aristophanes criticizing local politicians, and with the
one of the most renowned examples of its use in modern times being seen in the publication
Punch in 1843, where commentary was made on the British Parliament opening up murals of
well-dressed and well-fed people to the public instead of working to pass regulations that would
help the British achieve the state which the painted people were in. Traditionally done through
the many plays, posters, pamphlets, and newspapers that became aplenty in those times, the
coming of the radio and television allowed for satire to be more effectively employed as a
method with which to enlighten viewers. Through this, the authors thought that, they were
hopefully leading people to be convinced to educate themselves as to the reality of the situation
that has occurred or is currently occurring, with the appearance of shows such as The Colbert
Report and The Daily Show keeping Americans informed and knowledgeable regarding politics,
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with a Filipino equivalent seen in TV5’s Kontrabando and their mini-series on the fictitious
BAYAW Partylist shown to help Filipinos decide on the upcoming elections.
These shows bring up the question of as to what satire in the Philippines implies. Does satire
affect voter awareness, and if so, does it affect it positively or negatively?
The objective is to determine possible behavioral responses that voters might show when
exposed to satire. Albert Bandura in his social learning theory posits that learning involves three
types of modeling stimuli. To relate this to satire in voter awareness, the first two modeling
stimuli are the live model, in which a person is demonstrating the desired behavior, and the
verbal instruction model, in which an individual describes the desired behavior and instructs the
participant how to engage in the behavior, which can be seen in the wit and cynicism present in
the words and actions of satirists’ characters which does not aim for its viewers/readers to be
cynical and distrustful of all things, but instead convinces the audience to be critical of the
choices in voting that they make and propagate to others. The third model is the symbolic model;
in which modeling occurs through media, which has become widely used as a platform for which
one can launch political satire. It is to be thought of as whether this theory can explain the
relationship between satire and voter awareness, if there is any.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. Is there a relationship between exposure to satire and Filipino voter awareness? If there is
any, would the relationship affect the voter in a way as described by social learning
theory?
2. What are the factors that affect what Filipinos learn in satire? How do these factors affect
them?

THEORETICAL/CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
The purpose of this chapter is to explain and demonstrate the preliminary model in which the
Social learning theory as applied to satire in voter awareness which will be employed in this
study.
Formulated by Albert Bandura at Stanford University, this specifies that mass-media
messages give audience members an opportunity to identify with attractive characters that
demonstrate behavior, engage emotions, and allow mental rehearsal and modeling of new
behavior. The behavior of models in the mass media also offers vicarious reinforcement to
motivate audience members' adoption of the behavior.
The graph explains the possible changes that can happen to voters’ awareness when subjected
to satire. The box on the left shows a lack of response as such that exposure to satire will not
affect voter awareness. The box on the middle portion indicates a result in which voters will gain
voter awareness through learning from observation of a behaviour and its consequences as
stipulated by the social learning theory. The box on the right then indicates that there will be no
rallying point regardless of the exposure by voters to satire, ensuring that they pursue differing
paths with regards to voting choices in politics.
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Voter awareness

Subject to satire

No effect Social Learning Theory Differing perspectives

The lack of further restrictions from the social learning theory such as has allowed
for the consideration of gathering data within the University of Santo Tomas.

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Hariton (2011) in her thesis Satirical Political Media and Youth Political participation: A
Look at The Daily Show and The Colbert Report has done a review regarding satirical political
media and its relation to youth political participation. In her research, she managed to find out
that 76.1% of respondents (watcher of The Daily Show) to her survey. She concluded in her
study that satire, especially The Daily Show, does make an impact regarding youth political
participation but the nature of the impact, whether for the positive or for the negative, is hard to
comprehend and classify.
Studies of the same vein were done by Hillygus (2005), with the study leading to the fact that
high SAT scores indicates a greater amount of political participation later in life, and Smith
(1999), with participation in extracurricular activities as the independent variable instead of
exposure to satire. The study concludes that participation in extracurricular activities serves as
precursors, if not prerequisites for both college attendance and political participation in
adulthood. Research done by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and
Engagement (CIRCLE) from 2001-2011 pushes further on this conclusion, stating that,
generally, a lack of college attendance leads to less participation in extracurricular activities
which causes less political participation later in life.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research design. The study utilized a qualitative method of research to distinguish the
students of UST and assess background and factors affecting the opinions of the students such as
family, peers, school groups, and the church; and to gain an understanding of the preference of
the voting in the political realm: in choosing a candidate to vote, point of view on Philippine
politics, and how society affects the opinion of the undergraduates of the University of Santo
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Tomas (UST) school year 2015-2016. Following the qualitative method is an analytical type of
research that would provide an understanding of opinion, experience and behaviour.

Research Locale. The respondent of the study is the student community of the University
of Santo Tomas (UST). UST was founded by Miguel de Benavides, Archbishop of Manila on
April 28, 1611. It is known as the oldest existing university in Asia and the largest Catholic
university in the world. The mission of UST is advancement in terms of competency,
commitment and compassion. Its vision is to commit on the professional and moral formation of
its agents for social transformation.

Research Instrument. The research instrument that will be utilized in this study is in the
form of a survey questionnaire that will be handed out to respondents. The survey will confirm,
first of all, whether the respondent is familiar with any form of satire. The questionnaire is then
constructed in such a way that will determine the type of satire the respondent is familiar with
and to what object it is aimed as well as the extent which it affects the political and voting
choices of the individual. The research instrument uses a multiple choice type of questions and
presents the respondents with several situations that would test their leanings based on their
answers.

Sample Population of the Study. For this study, the population that will be sampled is
the students of the University of Santo Tomas (UST). The methodology for this study is a
purposive approach of sampling particularly homogenous sampling inclined to the student
community in UST. Purposive sampling is applied considering the purpose of the study
administers a group of people with the same background and fits in a particular profile, in this
case, the voting student community. However, purposive sampling is considered as a non-
probabilistic sampling by reason of having bias and judgments such as how society perceives the
student community. The samples are selected through choosing from individuals who are eligible
to become both a part of the voting community and viewers of satire.

Data Gathering procedure. The method of survey questionnaire will be utilized in this
research. The first step that the study shall undergo in gathering data is to form a questionnaire
that is both concise and straightforward in the construction of its questions to the public. The
team set a standard for the hand-out questionnaire however and it is as follows: First, the survey
must tackle voters’ personal preferences. Second, the survey must be one that determines the
political leanings of an individual without discriminating a respondent’s belonging to a particular
gender, race, or ethnicity. With these steps concluded, the team conducted the survey to
determine the number of individuals belonging to the voting community in the University of
Santo Tomas by handing out the research questionnaire in the different colleges in the
University. Along with the post for the questionnaire comes the instruction that only members of
the voting community are eligible to answer the said survey. The team shall permit for a time
period of 1 week before gathering the results from the conducted survey.
Since the research is taken with a qualitative approach and will be using a survey
questionnaire to calculate the results for it, the results from the survey will be treated as
collective results from a straightforward data and no other formula aside from the acquiring of
data percentage will be utilized.
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Statistical Treatment of Data. Since the study will not be employing an online data
gathering survey that automatically tallies results; the team found it mandatory to include the raw
data gathered in this part of the research paper in order to demonstrate how the hypothesis will
be formulated in the latter part of the research through presenting the data variables first and then
elaborating on how these variables will be tampered with; a step that will be accomplished in the
Data and Results part of the research paper. In the survey conducted to determine the
relationship between the exposure to satire and political awareness of a voting individual, the
study acquired the following results:
From the data, it can be inferred that there is no consistency with the reactions or
behaviour of the voting community under different colleges. The data presents that the majority
of reaction took by the voting community in most colleges is to have collective beliefs and
conform to the social learning theory. This confirms that the majority of the voting community
does indeed attempt to conform to their environment. These may perhaps call for more
investigation in a different study.
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REFERENCES
Bevere, A., & Cerri, A. (2006). Il Diritto di informazione e i diritti della persona. Milan.

Elliott, R. C. (2004). The nature of satire. In Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica,

Inc.

Hariton, A. (2011). Satirical Political Media and Youth Political Participation. Bloomington.

Hillygus, S. (2005). The Missing Link: Exploring the Relationship Between Higher Education
and Political Engagement. Political Behavior, 27(1), 25-47.

Kirby, E. H., Lopez, M. H., & Marcelo, K. B. (2007, June). Youth Voter Turnout Increases in
2006. Retrieved November 29, 2015, from Center for Information and Research on Civic
Learning and Engagement:
http://www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/FactSheets/FS07_2006MidtermCPS.pdf

Smith, E. S. (1999). The Effects of Investments in the Social Capital of Youth on Political and
Civic Behavior in Young Adulthood: A Longitudinal Analysis. International Society of
Political Psychology, 20(3), 553-580.