Conceptions of Political Issues Among Netizens: A Phenomenographic Approach of Online Political Narratives

Abstract

The phenomenon of political discourse on social media is now an important domain through which people make sense of political issues. Nevertheless, there is little scholarly attention paid to studying the unique qualities of how political narratives get constructed by individual citizens. This study explores how Filipinos on Facebook make sense of political issues through narratives about flood control. The study adopts a qualitative method known as phenomenography. Twenty Facebook posts from August to November 2025 that were publicly available on Facebook have been purposively sampled and analyzed using thematic analysis and phenomenographic analysis techniques. Five conceptions have been developed: (1) Leadership and Accountability as Failed Public Responsibility; (2) Institutions as Sites of Legitimacy Crisis; (3) Flood Control Discourse as an Arena of Political Struggle; (4) Political Power as Elite-Dynastic Continuity; and (5) Flood Control Governance as a System of Organized Extraction. The five conceptions represent the evolution from assessments of individual leaders to more structural assessments of institutions and governance and corruption in society. This paper highlights how Filipino netizens construct their political narratives through different perspectives that are interconnected and are influenced by lived experiences and digital discourse. Through the mapping of such variances into an outcome space, the study contributes to phenomenography, digital politics, and media literacy.