The negotiation of public issues on social media platforms has become an everyday practice, raising lingering questions about their civic ends. Anchored on Georgakopoulou’s small stories and Papacharissi’s affective publics, the paper explores “playful uncertainty” as a mode of civic engagement on social media and unpacks its civic consequentiality. Using COVID-19 vaccination-related local hashtags as a case study, a six-week digital ethnography was conducted, coinciding with the mass roll out of COVID-19 vaccination in the Philippines. As a form of methodological bricolage, participant observation, platform analysis, qualitative text analysis, and visual analysis methods were integrated in examining affective attunement with personal COVID-19 vaccination stories on Facebook. The paper puts forward “playful uncertainty” as a typical mode of affective civic engagement in high uncertainty contexts such as a pandemic. Characterized by humor and exaggeration coupled with popular culture, ordinary users deployed playful uncertainty to engage with fake news, deal with their fears about vaccine safety and efficacy, and articulate their frustrations with the delivery of public health services. The paper argues that the emerging affective publics negotiated high uncertainty and, at the same time, deployed criticism. The paper also outlines some detrimental outcomes of this mode of civic engagement. The paper contributes to debates on the value of everyday practices on social media and responds to calls for more research on citizen engagement and participation in civic life on social media in various contexts. The paper also provides impetus for attention to humor in the lay negotiation of expert-based domains.

Authors:
Rosa Pilipinas Francisco, University of the Philippines Los Banos, Philippines

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Rosa Pilipinas F. Francisco is an Assistant Professor at the University of the Philippines Los Banos. Her current research explores the intersections of storytelling, affect, civic engagement, and agency in social media.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Thursday Schedule

Bookmark