THREE PAPERS from UST bested entries from other universities at the National Communication Research Conference in the University of the Philippines (UP)-Diliman.
“The ‘Evolving Self’ in the Narratives of Recording Addicts: A Journey to Symbolic Interactionism” by Graduate School student Susan Jo, was declared best paper under the cluster “Community Communication: Communication that Originates from, Circulates in, and Reasons with Communities.” Her study won over entries from UP Diliman and Baguio.
Sherelle Mainica Perez, also a Graduate School student, bagged the best paper presentation award for her research “Free and fearless: The Online Disinhibition Effect in Blogs and Social Networks” under the category “Transformative Media: To Transform and be Transformed by the Media.” Her research bested those from UP and Polytechnic University of the Philippines.
“I did not expect to win at all because other papers within my category were full-blown researches, so I thought I did not stand a chance,” Perez said.
Meanwhile, the undergraduate study “Rhetoric of Radio: An Exploratory Study on the Language of AM Radio News in Manila and its Implication on the Structural Journalistic Approach of Radio Journalism” by journalism seniors Lou Mariz Abadilla, Carissa Caraig, Mery Rose Ajero, and Mary Janine Baban bagged the best paper presentation under the category “Keeping Up with the Evolutionary Media.” Abadilla’s group bested an entry from UP and another from UST.
“[We] are very happy and blessed because it was our first time to join and win a national research competition,” Abadilla said.
Another entry from UST competed under the same category: “Relationship Between News Browsing and News Selecting to Readers’ Level of News Literacy” by journalism seniors Gerardine Anne Lucero, Isabella Angelica Millanes, Maricar Mojica, and Jessamine Ver. They were supposed to compete under a different category, “Observing the Observer, Analyzing Audience Members,” but due to changes on the list of entries, they were reassigned to the same category as Abadilla’s group.
Other entries from UST that joined the conference were “Re-evaluating newsworthiness in the Age of Tweeting: A Content Analysis of Online News Stories with Tweets” by Hahyun Chang, Nichole Cruz, Charmaine de Lazo, Abbijah Dulnuan, and Inkyoung Hwang; and “Provincial Newspaper Reportage and Collective Identity: A Content Analysis on the Contributions of the Bohol Chronicle in the formation of the Boholano Identity” by Pamela Cabrera, Alyssa Ashley Cruz, Peevi Jannsen Juan, Alexandra Marie Saclao, and Maiqui Rome Sta. Ana.
The groups of undergraduate researchers were coached by Jeremaiah Opiniano, thesis coordinator for the Journalism program and former Varsitarian editor.
The two-day conference was organized by the UP Communication Research Department, Philippine Association of Communication Educators, and Philippines Communication Society.
