Filipinos, Who Are They?
In a thesis written by Darleen Principe, Understanding the News Needs of U.S.-born Filipinos in Los Angeles, she recognizes the lack of representation of Filipino Angelenos in our mass media and ethnic media in Los Angeles. Principe utilized a research article that served as the backbone for her thesis- which allowed her to go into further explanation to why most Filipino Angelenos have a stronger presence in digital social networking platforms. She also provides her readers insight of the Filipino diaspora and how Filipinos resulted in becoming one of the largest diaspora populations in the United States. Furthermore, the Filipino community in Los Angeles alone serves as a home to roughly about 158,000 Filipinos.
Although there is little to no representation in ethnic media, there are a few new outlets that caters their news to Filipino Americans, such as the Asian Journal and Positively Filipino. The difference between the two is that Positively Filipino’s news solely consist of global news that entail information of the Filipino diaspora, which is a small step in the direction towards the representation of their community.
One of the major issues that I noticed as I was briefly reading over Principe’s work was that both Filipino Americans and non -Filipinos are not aware of the basic history of Filipinos. Without that knowledge, it does make it challenging to find or fulfill the representation for this particular community. Although, there are a few developments that do go unnoticed. As I stated earlier in regards to using digital social platforms, it is very clear that there are a myriad of public spheres that allow for different Filipino communities to engage with one another. The information in these spheres have no boundaries and can range from political news and entertainment news.
