I am P/Ninoy: Filipino Diaspora, Technology and Network Nationalism

The Filipino tendency of ingenuity has permeated almost all facets of culture and psyche - from feasts to disasters, both local and global. This showcase of ability to establish connections between materials at hand and experiences at front is symptomatic to a nation whose geography is forever divided by seas, language, religion, and consciousness. Desperate in approaching the diversities, its heroes found refuge in technology - from novels of print capitalism to websites of globalization. On these acts of national imagination, citizenship goes through periods of resiliency producing nationalist icons and anonymous heroes. This essay is a survey of national experiences when Filipinos, conscious of the need of a “one nation,” capitalize on technology to forge citizenship and nationalism. With their created record of information and communication technology use, “network nationalism” comes close to this nation’s patriotic declarations in an era of wired and electronic connections.