Ria Andayani
Radio broadcasting was a tool of soft power in the American colonization of the Philippines in the first half of the 20th century. An analysis of the structure and content of broadcasting in the Philippines then, and even today, may indicate the success of this ideological project. To a significant extent, radio, along with other forms of popular culture, shaped the dominant knowledge and value systems of Filipinos, perhaps even more effectively and efficiently than the public school system established by the American colonial administration.
However, even then, Filipino broadcasters engaged in decolonial work by appropriating the alien culture on several fronts – culturally, politically, and economically. Because their labor was mobilized to feed a hungry medium that the Americans alone could not provide in the colony, Filipino broadcasters inserted the local in what was meant to be a Western, or universal mode of modernization. This act included moments of resistances that may not have been self-conscious, and strategies to profit from the radio enterprise. This tension persisted even after the formal colonial tie ended and continues under the present neocolonial condition.
I propose that we can derive some lessons from the experience of the Philippines in radio broadcasting as an instrument of coloniality as well as how such a project opens up opportunities for decoloniality.
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https://sites.google.com/view/radioanddecolonization/schedule?authuser=0
