The Asian Conference on Media and Mass Communication 2014

The Asian Conference on Media and Mass Communication 2014

The Asian Conference on Media and Mass Communication 2014

Every culture has its “hot button”, or that certain something that elicits a strong,
emotional response that can lead to conflict. Filipinos are known to be warm, friendly
and hospitable, but that hot button was pushed when a Polish blogger wrote that she
would rather go hungry than eat Filipino food again. Her blog, which details her street
food experience in different parts of the Philippines, has gone viral in social media
and local news, with Filipinos defending their beloved food culture. Her controversial
blog entry has accumulated more than 680 responses from a variety of nations, and
the comments section is ripe with material for a cross-cultural analysis on how people
from different cultures “save face” in a particular environment.

Several web log comments and narratives from the blog entry were qualitatively
analyzed using Face-Negotiation Theory, which provides an explanatory framework
in the study of conflict behaviors. The analysis of the food blog underscores the
differences between the individualistic tendencies of Western countries and the
collective outlook of Asian countries. It was found out that the new media domain
provides an equalizing environment where facework interaction strategies are more
fluid, and the use of emoticons and text-based arguments compensate for the lack of
non-verbal cues. The investigation of blogs and other cultural products of new media
opens up a whole new understanding of how people from different cultures
communicate and manage conflict in an intercultural setting.

Christine Anne R. Cox