[Music]
all right good afternoon everyone it’s a
pleasure to be here first of all let me
make a disclaimer that you’re not going
to see any stunts today I did not sign
up for anything like that so sorry to
disappoint you so today I’ll talk about
in defense of Commons so what are
Commons comments are common spaces right
because after all that’s a theme today
and I’m going to talk about that issue
because this presentation is about a
call to arms there’s a sense of urgency
that I want us to discuss today and I
approach this issue ah from my own
experience as a teacher as a university
professor and of course since I’ve
fought in both LaSalle and Ateneo I
don’t take sides in UAAP finals uh and
also as the columnist and policy advisor
and also as a global Filipino so when
later on I’ll discuss this Common Spaces
that I feel are under threat I’ll
discuss it from the perspective of me
visiting different countries and
experiencing how this Common Spaces have
come under threat in the past few years
so unfortunately you’re going to see
some of my own pictures and selfies so
some again advance warnings okay
okay for me everything started in a
classroom ah
not long ago a few months ago I’m not
going to say in which university ah we
had very contentious discussions inside
my classroom and you can guess about
what it was just shortly after our own
polarizing elections and it was about a
specific policy that has put the
Philippines in the global spotlight so
you can guess what that policy is right
and we’re going to avoid having any kind
of partisan discussion of that so it was
a very contentious issue and it became
very emotional I always believed that
university is the last refuge for us
having reasonable evidence-based and
mutually respectful conversation so I
asked my students this is what I learned
in yupi you know professors should not
impose their points of view on students
they should share with your students or
points of
allow for their students to feel free to
express themselves so I asked my
students are you in agreement with that
specific policy which has come under
criticism by human rights groups and a
lot of colleges around the world to my
astonishment almost my classroom was
split into three one third was
emotionally against it I have I had one
student almost in tears saying that this
is abhorrent
this is unacceptable in a liberal
democracy and then even more
astonishingly I saw almost one-third of
the other class in a skeptical sense
saying maybe sometimes you need drastic
measures to deal with fundamental
threats to rule of law and our sense of
basic security so who suddenly the
atmosphere change the discussions were
very contentious and then one third of
the class the ones remaining we’re just
observing the debate and we’re
completely undecided now what they
realize in that conversation in the
classroom was how important was it first
of all to have that space that common
space for us to share our points of view
without the fear of coming under attack
whether physically or psychological by
the other side I also realize how
important it was for someone to be like
a night watchman and make sure people
don’t go WWE or UFC on each other right
that was a very important thing so
protection of common spaces is extremely
important and that’s one thing that we
hold sacred we did the four corners of
the classroom but that’s not only the
common space that we should be concerned
about we should also be concerned about
common spaces beyond the four corners of
the classroom and I’m going to talk
about two s today s squared right not
some summer I think that what is social
media and the other one is as you can
guess South China Sea right these are
two important common spaces that have
come under unprecedented assault in the
past few years and that will have
implications for each and every one of
you especially for those who use
Facebook which is practically everyone
and those who travel around the region
which is probably most of us right now
so I’ll approach this issue from a
global Filipino point of view not so
much in the context of Philippines for
the global point of view and just to
tell you I’m not going to boast that I’m
a jet setter but I’ve been in
seven countries already since they
started this year right and because it’s
part of my advocacy to understand these
threats that we’re facing to these
Common Spaces the first thing we want to
discuss is new media or social media or
anti social media or psychopath media
what everyone call it as Commons but
what are comments the comments are
common spaces in economics it’s called
public goods right and public goods are
common spaces our comments have two key
characteristic one is they should be non
rival risks and second non exclusionary
right it’s like air
right me breathing the air should not
come at the expense of you having access
to that air and it should be non
exclusionary if you are prevented from
breathing that’s the end of your life
right the same concept applies to for
instance
Adso ads I should it’s supposed to be a
common that allow everyone’s to pass you
off first but we can clearly see it’s no
longer that common because it’s getting
more and more congested every day but
nonetheless let’s talk about social
media social media is extremely
important because the way it was
presented by – I didn’t join facebook on
it in 2013 and 14 because many people
thought it was kind of weird if you’re
not on Facebook you’re doing something
fishy so when I was meeting people in
bars and everywhere you don’t have a
Facebook so I had to sign up for
Facebook just to be a normal person
right ah but I was very skeptical of
face but I thought it’s a distraction is
a waste of time but a lot of people back
in the day is 2012-13 we’re saying this
is a new platform for social
mobilisation this is an opportunity for
us to challenge authority and the
establishment this allows ordinary
citizens to circumvent the existing
gatekeepers right which is mainstream
media right which is politicians this
provides new opportunities for consumers
and suppliers to interact for
politicians and statesmen to know about
the preferences of their students right
and let me talk about social media as a
reverse fairytale right so a normal
fairytale starts with you know it snow
white whatever everything is ugly and in
the end the prince comes and saves earth
in the case of social media from my own
experience and in my own academic work
it was a reverse and let me talk about
that how in Reverse how is it rivers now
I think so if you remember there was
something called Arab Spring right or
Arab uprising
it started with a self-immolation of a
person in Tunisia Mohammed was easy and
the next thing you know by December 2010
one dictator in Tunisia was gone and
then over the next few years one after
the other other dictators faced harder
threats or were overthrown
now I happen to be in Egypt I’ll show
you my own pictures and stuff you don’t
worry about it I’m sure you’re very
excited about it oh that picture
essentially the guidance in Arabic is
saying shukran which you know what it
means right thank you and I think it’s
Shabaab all messed which means youth of
Egypt so it was essentially thinking
Facebook and the youth of Egypt who use
the Facebook to mobilize people in the
so-called Tahrir Square it’s not so
called its Tahrir Square as a reason for
them to get rid of their dictator mr.
Mubarak right
this was the euphoria to use the
beautiful and to use the reach objective
of Donald Trump those are beautiful
beautiful days right in fact shortly
after while our name at Google executive
wrote a book called revolution to point
over but he argued that thanks to social
media now we can hold our leaders
accountable like never before it was a
very ambitious treatise by a non social
social scientist and a Google executive
and this was huge this was huge and this
made actually people like Mark
Zuckerberg among others look like
revolutionaries people who brought
freedom to the last vestige of autocracy
which is the Middle East now
incidentally few months before they are
of spring I was there in Tahrir Square
but for a different engagement and as
you can see that that photo a lad that’s
on 6 October bridge reached just next to
Tahrir Square and a lot of nasty
confrontations between the protesters
and the security forces happened during
the Egyptian revolution in early 2011 so
these things were very close to my heart
and I visited the Middle East
consistently over the years to cover the
Arab Spring and eventually I wrote a
book on that
and there’s the book this is not
promotion but in the subtitle I thought
about the precarious feature of the
Middle East uprisings I was skeptic
I was skeptical about where this is
going and I was writing that book in
2012-2013 before the situation really
got bad and one of the things that I
noticed was this euphoria about social
media was always questionable you’re a
number of reasons why I had doubts about
social media first and foremost the
problem with social media is that it
engenders a sense of shallow solidarity
right okay so some poor people in Africa
like right some person fighting for her
daughter to have a new birthday gift
like right so that like culture doesn’t
engender the stick solidarity that you
need for revolution look at all major
revolutions French Revolution Chinese
Revolution Iranian Revolution all this
major revolution had people risking
their life and their limb going there on
the street every single day now if you
follow the Korean protest against Park
Yuna you could see million people going
into dark cold to call for the
resignation of the president and
eventually worked that is what you call
true social mobilization the problem
with social media mobilization is that
most of us end up just ranting on the
Facebook liking or disliking or now
putting angry or whatever different
kinds of emoticon and that’s it let’s
move to the next issue so this short
attention span revolutionary rant is not
going to work so the problem egypt and
around the arab world was that people
were so good on facebook but on the
ground not much organization so they
were outmaneuvered by people who are
doing right organization like the muslim
brotherhood and others the second
problem is in sophisticated countries
sophisticated autocratic countries i
don’t need to name these countries
they’re big they’re powerful they can
actually infiltrate and survey what
you’re doing in your facebook in some
countries you have to get all your
facebook or twitter or whatever
encrypted to make sure no one is
watching you well in certain countries
the government could very much see what
was happening behind the scenes and in
fact we use the facebook communication
or social media communication of the
opposition to track what will be their
next activity but it became this
ridiculous so opposition people say oh
on february 18
a protest the government perfectly knows
when it’s going to happen so they’re
going to prepare and lock off clothes of
the entire area so at some point it was
not working the reverse the third
problem and this is where it got a
little bit uglier was that social media
became a platform for polarization so if
you’re anti an issue you have your own
Facebook page and if you’re prone issue
you make your own Facebook page and
depending on your emotional stance you
just visit one side and never listen to
the other side so complete polarization
right in the Ukraine crisis for instance
if your russian-speaking you have your
own sources on social media if you’re
the crane and speaking you have your own
sources there was not much commons
having not much communication happening
and the fourth one where things got
really ugly really ugly i was not able
to cover this in my book because what’s
happening here can we put it next okay
oops i ruined the surprise
oh is twitter devolution right the rise
of isis was a clear indication that
technology is ultimately a double-edged
sword it depends on how you use it and
what we had were a bunch of extremists
using Twitter to actually propagate
their hate ideology in fact to tell you
how creative this guys were I suppose
you know about soccer right World Cup
sometimes they use the hashtag of World
Cup and name of people like Leonel Messi
and then put their own crazy videos
there so essentially that extremist
groups hijacking these social media
avenues to push for their ideology so at
some point it became toxic and at some
point the social media actually help
these people to project power beyond
what they were I remember like a year or
something like my cousins were asking me
a Richard are these Isis guys going to
take over the world because they were
watching all these videos on Twitter on
Facebook so you could see how it worked
as a multiplier effect for these groups
to project power around the world now
things got even nastier last year with
the advent of so-called fake news right
now if you can see in that picture
oops okay oh it’s a picture that claims
based on a fake news site that the
Syrian refugee renounce Islam after
tasting bacon
right so it’s essentially saying that
you know it’s all about tasting bacon
and that’s where you’re going to give up
your faith so now this is a much more
trivial fake news and it got actually
last year over time you can see the top
five fake election stories in 2016 the
first one said that actually Pope
Francis endorsed Donald Trump for
president sounds familiar right and and
of course so on and so forth and the
situation is actually much more
rewarding so there wasn’t study done by
a Stanford University and New York
University academic about the election
last year in the United States that
showed that fake news came to dominate
the public space so as far as social
media is concerned people were not
minding CNN’s and BBC’s and the
Bloomberg’s of this world everyone was
minding fake news this was huge so can
you imagine a situation whereby people
are relying more on social media but is
now a poison well of fake news and that
really work against one candidate and
very much in favor of the other
candidate I can guess who we are talking
about now this is another interesting a
figure that shows that at some point
people were relying more on fake news
than mainstream news and the thing with
fake news unlike mainstream use is that
mainstream news is supposed to be
objective right so it’s written in a
very bland way it doesn’t inspire
emotion fake news on the other hand is
systematically arranged to provoke
emotion and in elections nowadays
apparently for the best way to predict
an electoral outcome is not the surveys
anymore in fact our pulse asia and
establish was more accurate than the
u.s. election pulsers the best way now
to god how the election could turn out
based on a study done by a South African
firm is emoticons emotions right like do
you know that like there’s a picture of
this person and you see a lot of hearts
right so one candidate in the US was
very successful had half of the screen
all hearts half of the screen all like
hatred anger right the other candidate
was essentially nothing no one cared and
guess who won so social media now
appeals to our emotions is much more
personal it’s less bland so if you can
follow eyes on that well for a specific
agenda you can actually decide the
electoral outcome right and from brixi
to Donald Trump and to elections this
year French elections we can see that
this situation is getting more and more
seriously point that both Barack Obama
Angela Merkel a lot of global leaders
are not talking about talking about big
news as a threat to democracy now
incidentally I was there in the Time
Square during the US election before I
gave a talk at Columbia University and
this is a snapshot I took when I felt
it’s over Donald Trump is going to win
this election
in fact I called it live on different
channels in I actually uploaded a live
shot of the election coverage on my
Facebook account
and by this number around 46 47 percent
I knew that Hillary Clinton lost it
course
where’s next one okay that’s me okay
let’s just move forward just an evidence
that was there okay what is the
relevance to us here in the Philippines
why should we care all right I’m talking
about other countries on top of the Arab
world involved with United States what
is the relevant sauce now I saw I came
across a very interesting data about
what are the water countries around the
world most known for please ignore UAE
and Pakistan all right look at the
Philippines what are we known for as our
best thing right social networking I
really don’t know what they mean but I
think what it clearly says is that a lot
of us depend on social media a lot now
of course the other thing that is under
threat nowadays is the South China Sea
and you could see that the situation is
getting uglier and uglier with greater
militarization of these disputes now why
should we care about that because just
like social media is also a common space
have you visited other countries in the
ASEAN
if you have noticed you pass over a body
of water right that’s called the South
China Sea and if that body of water is
militarized
your safety your ability to pass through
safely to that area comes under question
not to mention our access to trillions
of dollars every of trade every year our
access to energy resources that we
import from other countries not to
mention fishery resources 70 to 80
of our resources fishery stuff comes
from the South China Sea now over the
years of course I as part of my advocacy
I try to join different issues including
this one with previous president Taiwan
Myung Joo on pushing for a South China
Sea peace initiative and eventually I
consolidated all of my advocacies and
analyses into my previous book Asia’s
new battle now to wrap it up there are
solutions and I think this is not a
problem that is hopeless as Thomas
Jefferson put it you know the price for
Liberty is eternal vigilance and I think
it’s the same level of vigilance that we
should have when it comes to social
media when it comes to pushing for peace
in the South China Sea and just like in
my classroom I realize that not only
should we guard these Common Spaces to
make sure they’re not poison wells we
also have to guard our own biases our
emotions and anger to make sure that we
don’t deprive others their capability
and their ability to have mutually
respectful and evidence-based discussion
with each other
[Applause]
[Music]
all right good afternoon everyone it’s a
pleasure to be here first of all let me
make a disclaimer that you’re not going
to see any stunts today I did not sign
up for anything like that so sorry to
disappoint you so today I’ll talk about
in defense of Commons so what are
Commons comments are common spaces right
because after all that’s a theme today
and I’m going to talk about that issue
because this presentation is about a
call to arms there’s a sense of urgency
that I want us to discuss today and I
approach this issue ah from my own
experience as a teacher as a university
professor and of course since I’ve
fought in both LaSalle and Ateneo I
don’t take sides in UAAP finals uh and
also as the columnist and policy advisor
and also as a global Filipino so when
later on I’ll discuss this Common Spaces
that I feel are under threat I’ll
discuss it from the perspective of me
visiting different countries and
experiencing how this Common Spaces have
come under threat in the past few years
so unfortunately you’re going to see
some of my own pictures and selfies so
some again advance warnings okay
okay for me everything started in a
classroom ah
not long ago a few months ago I’m not
going to say in which university ah we
had very contentious discussions inside
my classroom and you can guess about
what it was just shortly after our own
polarizing elections and it was about a
specific policy that has put the
Philippines in the global spotlight so
you can guess what that policy is right
and we’re going to avoid having any kind
of partisan discussion of that so it was
a very contentious issue and it became
very emotional I always believed that
university is the last refuge for us
having reasonable evidence-based and
mutually respectful conversation so I
asked my students this is what I learned
in yupi you know professors should not
impose their points of view on students
they should share with your students or
points of
allow for their students to feel free to
express themselves so I asked my
students are you in agreement with that
specific policy which has come under
criticism by human rights groups and a
lot of colleges around the world to my
astonishment almost my classroom was
split into three one third was
emotionally against it I have I had one
student almost in tears saying that this
is abhorrent
this is unacceptable in a liberal
democracy and then even more
astonishingly I saw almost one-third of
the other class in a skeptical sense
saying maybe sometimes you need drastic
measures to deal with fundamental
threats to rule of law and our sense of
basic security so who suddenly the
atmosphere change the discussions were
very contentious and then one third of
the class the ones remaining we’re just
observing the debate and we’re
completely undecided now what they
realize in that conversation in the
classroom was how important was it first
of all to have that space that common
space for us to share our points of view
without the fear of coming under attack
whether physically or psychological by
the other side I also realize how
important it was for someone to be like
a night watchman and make sure people
don’t go WWE or UFC on each other right
that was a very important thing so
protection of common spaces is extremely
important and that’s one thing that we
hold sacred we did the four corners of
the classroom but that’s not only the
common space that we should be concerned
about we should also be concerned about
common spaces beyond the four corners of
the classroom and I’m going to talk
about two s today s squared right not
some summer I think that what is social
media and the other one is as you can
guess South China Sea right these are
two important common spaces that have
come under unprecedented assault in the
past few years and that will have
implications for each and every one of
you especially for those who use
Facebook which is practically everyone
and those who travel around the region
which is probably most of us right now
so I’ll approach this issue from a
global Filipino point of view not so
much in the context of Philippines for
the global point of view and just to
tell you I’m not going to boast that I’m
a jet setter but I’ve been in
seven countries already since they
started this year right and because it’s
part of my advocacy to understand these
threats that we’re facing to these
Common Spaces the first thing we want to
discuss is new media or social media or
anti social media or psychopath media
what everyone call it as Commons but
what are comments the comments are
common spaces in economics it’s called
public goods right and public goods are
common spaces our comments have two key
characteristic one is they should be non
rival risks and second non exclusionary
right it’s like air
right me breathing the air should not
come at the expense of you having access
to that air and it should be non
exclusionary if you are prevented from
breathing that’s the end of your life
right the same concept applies to for
instance
Adso ads I should it’s supposed to be a
common that allow everyone’s to pass you
off first but we can clearly see it’s no
longer that common because it’s getting
more and more congested every day but
nonetheless let’s talk about social
media social media is extremely
important because the way it was
presented by – I didn’t join facebook on
it in 2013 and 14 because many people
thought it was kind of weird if you’re
not on Facebook you’re doing something
fishy so when I was meeting people in
bars and everywhere you don’t have a
Facebook so I had to sign up for
Facebook just to be a normal person
right ah but I was very skeptical of
face but I thought it’s a distraction is
a waste of time but a lot of people back
in the day is 2012-13 we’re saying this
is a new platform for social
mobilisation this is an opportunity for
us to challenge authority and the
establishment this allows ordinary
citizens to circumvent the existing
gatekeepers right which is mainstream
media right which is politicians this
provides new opportunities for consumers
and suppliers to interact for
politicians and statesmen to know about
the preferences of their students right
and let me talk about social media as a
reverse fairytale right so a normal
fairytale starts with you know it snow
white whatever everything is ugly and in
the end the prince comes and saves earth
in the case of social media from my own
experience and in my own academic work
it was a reverse and let me talk about
that how in Reverse how is it rivers now
I think so if you remember there was
something called Arab Spring right or
Arab uprising
it started with a self-immolation of a
person in Tunisia Mohammed was easy and
the next thing you know by December 2010
one dictator in Tunisia was gone and
then over the next few years one after
the other other dictators faced harder
threats or were overthrown
now I happen to be in Egypt I’ll show
you my own pictures and stuff you don’t
worry about it I’m sure you’re very
excited about it oh that picture
essentially the guidance in Arabic is
saying shukran which you know what it
means right thank you and I think it’s
Shabaab all messed which means youth of
Egypt so it was essentially thinking
Facebook and the youth of Egypt who use
the Facebook to mobilize people in the
so-called Tahrir Square it’s not so
called its Tahrir Square as a reason for
them to get rid of their dictator mr.
Mubarak right
this was the euphoria to use the
beautiful and to use the reach objective
of Donald Trump those are beautiful
beautiful days right in fact shortly
after while our name at Google executive
wrote a book called revolution to point
over but he argued that thanks to social
media now we can hold our leaders
accountable like never before it was a
very ambitious treatise by a non social
social scientist and a Google executive
and this was huge this was huge and this
made actually people like Mark
Zuckerberg among others look like
revolutionaries people who brought
freedom to the last vestige of autocracy
which is the Middle East now
incidentally few months before they are
of spring I was there in Tahrir Square
but for a different engagement and as
you can see that that photo a lad that’s
on 6 October bridge reached just next to
Tahrir Square and a lot of nasty
confrontations between the protesters
and the security forces happened during
the Egyptian revolution in early 2011 so
these things were very close to my heart
and I visited the Middle East
consistently over the years to cover the
Arab Spring and eventually I wrote a
book on that
and there’s the book this is not
promotion but in the subtitle I thought
about the precarious feature of the
Middle East uprisings I was skeptic
I was skeptical about where this is
going and I was writing that book in
2012-2013 before the situation really
got bad and one of the things that I
noticed was this euphoria about social
media was always questionable you’re a
number of reasons why I had doubts about
social media first and foremost the
problem with social media is that it
engenders a sense of shallow solidarity
right okay so some poor people in Africa
like right some person fighting for her
daughter to have a new birthday gift
like right so that like culture doesn’t
engender the stick solidarity that you
need for revolution look at all major
revolutions French Revolution Chinese
Revolution Iranian Revolution all this
major revolution had people risking
their life and their limb going there on
the street every single day now if you
follow the Korean protest against Park
Yuna you could see million people going
into dark cold to call for the
resignation of the president and
eventually worked that is what you call
true social mobilization the problem
with social media mobilization is that
most of us end up just ranting on the
Facebook liking or disliking or now
putting angry or whatever different
kinds of emoticon and that’s it let’s
move to the next issue so this short
attention span revolutionary rant is not
going to work so the problem egypt and
around the arab world was that people
were so good on facebook but on the
ground not much organization so they
were outmaneuvered by people who are
doing right organization like the muslim
brotherhood and others the second
problem is in sophisticated countries
sophisticated autocratic countries i
don’t need to name these countries
they’re big they’re powerful they can
actually infiltrate and survey what
you’re doing in your facebook in some
countries you have to get all your
facebook or twitter or whatever
encrypted to make sure no one is
watching you well in certain countries
the government could very much see what
was happening behind the scenes and in
fact we use the facebook communication
or social media communication of the
opposition to track what will be their
next activity but it became this
ridiculous so opposition people say oh
on february 18
a protest the government perfectly knows
when it’s going to happen so they’re
going to prepare and lock off clothes of
the entire area so at some point it was
not working the reverse the third
problem and this is where it got a
little bit uglier was that social media
became a platform for polarization so if
you’re anti an issue you have your own
Facebook page and if you’re prone issue
you make your own Facebook page and
depending on your emotional stance you
just visit one side and never listen to
the other side so complete polarization
right in the Ukraine crisis for instance
if your russian-speaking you have your
own sources on social media if you’re
the crane and speaking you have your own
sources there was not much commons
having not much communication happening
and the fourth one where things got
really ugly really ugly i was not able
to cover this in my book because what’s
happening here can we put it next okay
oops i ruined the surprise
oh is twitter devolution right the rise
of isis was a clear indication that
technology is ultimately a double-edged
sword it depends on how you use it and
what we had were a bunch of extremists
using Twitter to actually propagate
their hate ideology in fact to tell you
how creative this guys were I suppose
you know about soccer right World Cup
sometimes they use the hashtag of World
Cup and name of people like Leonel Messi
and then put their own crazy videos
there so essentially that extremist
groups hijacking these social media
avenues to push for their ideology so at
some point it became toxic and at some
point the social media actually help
these people to project power beyond
what they were I remember like a year or
something like my cousins were asking me
a Richard are these Isis guys going to
take over the world because they were
watching all these videos on Twitter on
Facebook so you could see how it worked
as a multiplier effect for these groups
to project power around the world now
things got even nastier last year with
the advent of so-called fake news right
now if you can see in that picture
oops okay oh it’s a picture that claims
based on a fake news site that the
Syrian refugee renounce Islam after
tasting bacon
right so it’s essentially saying that
you know it’s all about tasting bacon
and that’s where you’re going to give up
your faith so now this is a much more
trivial fake news and it got actually
last year over time you can see the top
five fake election stories in 2016 the
first one said that actually Pope
Francis endorsed Donald Trump for
president sounds familiar right and and
of course so on and so forth and the
situation is actually much more
rewarding so there wasn’t study done by
a Stanford University and New York
University academic about the election
last year in the United States that
showed that fake news came to dominate
the public space so as far as social
media is concerned people were not
minding CNN’s and BBC’s and the
Bloomberg’s of this world everyone was
minding fake news this was huge so can
you imagine a situation whereby people
are relying more on social media but is
now a poison well of fake news and that
really work against one candidate and
very much in favor of the other
candidate I can guess who we are talking
about now this is another interesting a
figure that shows that at some point
people were relying more on fake news
than mainstream news and the thing with
fake news unlike mainstream use is that
mainstream news is supposed to be
objective right so it’s written in a
very bland way it doesn’t inspire
emotion fake news on the other hand is
systematically arranged to provoke
emotion and in elections nowadays
apparently for the best way to predict
an electoral outcome is not the surveys
anymore in fact our pulse asia and
establish was more accurate than the
u.s. election pulsers the best way now
to god how the election could turn out
based on a study done by a South African
firm is emoticons emotions right like do
you know that like there’s a picture of
this person and you see a lot of hearts
right so one candidate in the US was
very successful had half of the screen
all hearts half of the screen all like
hatred anger right the other candidate
was essentially nothing no one cared and
guess who won so social media now
appeals to our emotions is much more
personal it’s less bland so if you can
follow eyes on that well for a specific
agenda you can actually decide the
electoral outcome right and from brixi
to Donald Trump and to elections this
year French elections we can see that
this situation is getting more and more
seriously point that both Barack Obama
Angela Merkel a lot of global leaders
are not talking about talking about big
news as a threat to democracy now
incidentally I was there in the Time
Square during the US election before I
gave a talk at Columbia University and
this is a snapshot I took when I felt
it’s over Donald Trump is going to win
this election
in fact I called it live on different
channels in I actually uploaded a live
shot of the election coverage on my
Facebook account
and by this number around 46 47 percent
I knew that Hillary Clinton lost it
course
where’s next one okay that’s me okay
let’s just move forward just an evidence
that was there okay what is the
relevance to us here in the Philippines
why should we care all right I’m talking
about other countries on top of the Arab
world involved with United States what
is the relevant sauce now I saw I came
across a very interesting data about
what are the water countries around the
world most known for please ignore UAE
and Pakistan all right look at the
Philippines what are we known for as our
best thing right social networking I
really don’t know what they mean but I
think what it clearly says is that a lot
of us depend on social media a lot now
of course the other thing that is under
threat nowadays is the South China Sea
and you could see that the situation is
getting uglier and uglier with greater
militarization of these disputes now why
should we care about that because just
like social media is also a common space
have you visited other countries in the
ASEAN
if you have noticed you pass over a body
of water right that’s called the South
China Sea and if that body of water is
militarized
your safety your ability to pass through
safely to that area comes under question
not to mention our access to trillions
of dollars every of trade every year our
access to energy resources that we
import from other countries not to
mention fishery resources 70 to 80
of our resources fishery stuff comes
from the South China Sea now over the
years of course I as part of my advocacy
I try to join different issues including
this one with previous president Taiwan
Myung Joo on pushing for a South China
Sea peace initiative and eventually I
consolidated all of my advocacies and
analyses into my previous book Asia’s
new battle now to wrap it up there are
solutions and I think this is not a
problem that is hopeless as Thomas
Jefferson put it you know the price for
Liberty is eternal vigilance and I think
it’s the same level of vigilance that we
should have when it comes to social
media when it comes to pushing for peace
in the South China Sea and just like in
my classroom I realize that not only
should we guard these Common Spaces to
make sure they’re not poison wells we
also have to guard our own biases our
emotions and anger to make sure that we
don’t deprive others their capability
and their ability to have mutually
respectful and evidence-based discussion
with each other
[Applause]
[Music]
Please follow and like us: