Rhoi Fernandez

192014

Initially, politics for me was limited to making use of our right to vote and voicing out
our political opinions and stance on certain issues. Upon going through the entire
course, my view of politics has relatively changed after realizing that politics can be
present in almost anything (may it be an event or a place). One of my main realizations
is that politics can also be seen in the norms of a country, especially when norms may
also be formed by people as a means of influencing how resources are used and how
decisions are made— which is something that the general notion of politics is also
concerned with. Norms often emerge because people find it necessary to follow them in
an attempt to create a sense of predictability within the society. In a way norms also act
as “soft rules”; thereby, controlling the behavior of the majority. Much like politics,
norms can also be created and used to take advantage of different minorities, and even
the vast majority of people. For instance, the presence of fake news has been normalized
on social media in which it is treated as a constant and not as something that should not
even exist. While believing in fake news is not exactly a norm, it is what prevents the
norm of fact checking and media literacy in the society from flourishing and emerging;
hence, why I would like to refer to these things as “anti-norms”. In a way, anti-norms
affect the behavior of the people by giving them more freedom to do things that are not
exactly good for them.

In relation to politics, fake news as an anti-norm prevents people from being properly
informed and rational when making decisions which may affect the society in
general—just like how the spread of fake news induces a lot of people to remain
close-minded given that fake news is used to reinforce their current opinions which are
based on false information (such as Marcos Golden Era). Conclusively, politics is so
widespread that it’s almost impossible to keep track of what even is considered as
politics.