Net negotiations: How Filipino families domesticate the Internet Jason Vincent A. Cabañes De La Salle University—Manila Original citation: Cabanes JVA (2008) “Net negotiations: How Filipino families domesticate the Internet”. In Proceedings of the 10th DLSU Science & Technology Congress. Manila: De La Salle University, pp. 29-3.1 Introduction 1.1 Background of the Study It has been argued that like many other information and communication technologies (ICTs), the Internet is a heavily value-laden tool. To be sure, several studies characterize the online experience as emphasizing identity construction with resources beyond our everyday world (Thompson, 1995), social disaggregation (Wheeler, 1998), and intensely mediated experiences (Silverstone, 2006). Rather curiously, these seem to contrast with certain Filipino family values, such as defining individual selves within the family context (De Torres, 2002), developing intimate relationships at home (Marquez, 2004; Parreño, 2007), and providing incomparable support, loyalty, and trust to immediate relatives (Hunt, 1993). 1.2 Statement of the Research Problem This study was driven by a concern for the seeming collisions between what Philippine society imagines to be the traits that are constitutive of the Filipino family and the propensities that are brought about by Internet use. Hence, I reckoned that it would be of great interest to look into how the Filipino family values and Web-embedded values interact with each other in the realm of the everyday. After all, “it is in the mundane world that the media operate most significantly… providing touchstones, references, for the conduct of everyday life, for the production and maintenance of common sense” (Silverstone, 1999). And since one of the most significant planes of everyday interactions is the household, it seemed that a study of how a Filipino family’s engages with the Internet at home was a relevant undertaking. 1.3 Research Questions RQ1. What do the members of the participating Filipino families perceive as the values promoted by the Internet? RQ2. What do the members of the participating Filipino families perceive as the values promoted by their own household? !1 RQ3. How do members of the participating Filipino families use their household values to (a) appropriate, (b) objectify, (c) incorporate, and (d) convert the Internet and its attendant values? 2. Theoretical Framework As a standpoint for understanding the phenomenon at hand, this study employed Silverstone, Hirsch, & Morley’s (1994) domestication framework. This approach focuses on how the domestic sphere applies its very own filter—the so-called moral economy of the household—in negotiating with the meanings that the public sphere inscribes in technological artifacts. Although this approach necessarily deals with both the macro and micro aspects of such an interaction, this work was more modest. Since my focus was on the events that take place within a Filipino household, I was not able to deal with the political economy of the transactional system at large (i.e., the public sphere and the market). Rather, I concentrated on developing a thick account of how the home manages its desire both for exclusivity (i.e., demonstrating its ability to uphold its autonomy and identity) and inclusivity (i.e., demonstrating its ability to take part of the complex public economy) when dealing with an ICT such as the Internet. TABLE I: Conceptual Definitions of the Stages of Domestication PHASE FOCUS Appropriation deciding to possess and own or not to possess and own a media artifact available in the public domain to indicate affinity for or distinction from it Objectification situating the media artifact in the home—both/either spatially and/or temporally—using a household’s value universe/evaluative process Incorporation accepting, rejecting, or negotiating how the creators imagined the use of the media artifact Conversion publicly displaying how the household employed the media artifact to achieve inclusion and/or exclusion 3. Research Method 3.1 Research Design Since the domestication of technologies from the perspective of Filipino family values has yet to be studied substantially, I decided to approach it in an exploratory manner. In other words, my intent for this study was not to arrive at causal data that might be generalized to a particular population. Instead, it was to derive rich and contextualized insights that might help direct future studies in this same field (Wimmer & Dominick, 2006). In line with this, I used purposive sampling in selecting the participants in the qualitative interviews that my research assistants and I conducted. !2 3.2 Case Selection Before asking several families regarding their possible participation in our project, I first drafted the following criteria: 1. Since the study pertains to Filipino family values in specific, all the members of the participating family must be Filipino. 2. Since the traditional Filipino family is depicted as a complete, close-knit unit, the father and mother of the participating family must be married and living together. 3. Since an important aspect of the domestication process is the parent-child dynamic, the participating family must have at least one child. Also, because the study required a considerable degree of insight generation and articulation from the child, he/she must be in middle school (N.B. In the Philippine context, the age range for this is usually from ten to thirteen years old). 4. Since the study is about Internet domestication, the participating family must have at least one Internet-connected computer at home. And in order for their online experience to be substantial, they must have had online access for at least a year. 3.3 Research Tools With the help of two co-researchers, I conducted in depth interviews of five families. For each, either my co-researchers or I talked to the father, the mother, and one child. I then subjected the data to a thematic analysis using the research questions. To help me make sense of the participants’ responses, I came up a flexible annotation scheme that summarized the key points that came up in the interviews. From there, I was able to identify the striking convergences and divergences and also, quite crucially, affirmations and ambiguities in their responses. And these were what I grappled with in my data analysis. 4. Findings and Discussions 4.1 Internet Values First, unlike Western academia, which has evaluated Internet values primarily in terms of the social (e.g., see Giddens’ notion of contrasting Internet tendencies, in Slevin, 2000), the participant parents appeared to employ different discourses in defining the Internet’s positive and negative traits. Although they did use a social lens in discussing the positives of going online (i.e., fostering old ties), they seemed to use a more moral lens in determining the negatives of such an activity (i.e., pornography and gambling). This kind of criterion for unwanted Internet tendencies might be indicative of Mulder’s (2000) assertion that because Filipinos perceive their public world to be a hopeless mess, they just tend to look for ways to be more moral individuals (focused on the betterment of one’s private life) and give up on trying to be more engaged citizens (focused on the betterment of society as a whole). The other thing is that my co-researchers and I could not really ask the children about Internet values because they had too little exposure to it, most of it supervised. Certainly, they did not know what the Internet was about. It seems then that the notion of bricolage (Chandler, 1998) does not apply to them, as their families still have a lot of say on their identity formation. !3 4.2 Family Values For all the families, keeping the family central to its members’ lives—whether by fostering or following a particular way of relating with each other—was the overarching household standard. And, it appeared that they were not having a difficult time implementing this. I reckon that this is because contrary to what Mesch claims (2006), the traditional parentover-child hierarchy appears resilient to the presence of the Internet. Of course, it can be said that this is bound to change as the children enter adolescence, a development stage that is widely held to be a time for experimentation. 4.3 The Domestication Process For the most part, the participants seemed to depict Internet inscriptions as agreeable to the moral economy of the household. For one, there was the unquestioned authority of the parents. In the appropriation stage, the children had no say, even no knowledge, of the reasons why they had Internet access at home. The same situation existed in the conversion stage, as evidenced by the children’s lack of ability to explain the purpose of their Internet service and their Internet-related equipment. In line with this, the parents also dictated the objectification and incorporation of the Internet into both families’ everyday lives. The other thing was that, as predicted by previous works (e.g., Murdock, 1994; Silverstone & Haddon, 1999), traditional gender relations played a key part in the domestication process. To be sure, the patriarchal practice of male control (Ruth, 1995) was quite evident in the appropriation stage. I have a couple of insights as regards the striking absence of contestations in the Internet values-Family values dynamic. On an abstract level, the participants—the parents most especially—used the same socially-oriented discourse to articulate the positive traits of the Internet and their family values, they were able to compare these two concepts well. However, they found it difficult to relate these with the negative traits of the Internet, which they framed in a moralistic manner. On a more concrete level, because ordinary Filipinos are not yet highly dependent on the Internet—as can be seen in the children participants’ minimal time spent online (i.e., between 15-30 minutes) and the parent participants’ lack of drive to publicly display their online participation (i.e., their very basic Internet set-up)— they can still effectively manage to contain its influence in their family lives. As this technology becomes more and more central in home experiences though, then we might begin to see how it can be a cause of significant tension within the family. 5. Conclusions and Recommendations A significant amount of data that I derived from this seemed to dispute existing relevant, though Western-oriented, literature. For one, the participants did not talk about Internet values in a singular way. Instead, they used a social frame to understand its positive values and a moral frame to understand its negative values. Then, their experience was that Internet presence did not make it difficult for them to foster the overarching value of the centrality of the nuclear family in the lives of all its members. In relation to this, the participants’ experiences indicated an extremely intriguing lack of contestation between Internet values and Filipino family values. Although I put forward some grounded explanations to make sense of the abovementioned data, I do suggest further investigations into these conceptual issues. First, a discourse !4 analysis of how Internet values are talked about by Filipinos in public and in private might help shed light on the dual frames that our participants used. Also, a study on the perceived and/or actual importance of the Internet in the Filipino household would be useful for understanding why it did not appear to pose much of a challenge to the participants’ family values. On a more methodological note, my co-researchers and I did encounter some problems in having our participants articulate their family values. We observed though that they expressed this better through narratives. So, a diary might really be a viable way to get a richer picture of these values. The other thing was that the children were at times unable to articulate their thoughts about the questions we asked. To remedy this, I suggest an ethnographic study of the domestication process. References Chandler, D. & Roberts-Young, D. (1998) The construction of identity in the personal homepages of adolescents. The University of Aberystwyth website. Accessed 22 Feb 2007. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/ strasbourg.html De Torres, S. (2002) Understanding persons of Philippine origin: A primer for rehabilitation service providers. Buffalo, New York: Center for International Rehabilitation Research Information and Exchange. Hunt, C. (1993) Chapter 2: The society & its environment. 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