Abstract
The Supreme Court of the Philippines has identified a lack of publicly accessible information on the courts, judicial process, and legal aid, and one initiative for accessibility is to pursue the development of intelligent platforms for self-help legal services such as TikTok, podcasts, and social media. This is important in the context of the Agricultural Free Patent Reform Act, where restrictions on agricultural free patents were lifted and parcels of land were given away to Filipino farmers. This development communication study aimed to analyze the legal communication process of an online social media-based program on property law popularization, produced by a public advocacy organization. Five key members of the program were purposely sampled and interviewed using semi-structured questions. The interviews were thematically analyzed through John Barnes’ Network Theory and George Mead’s Symbolic Interactionism. Data analysis involved a process of coding, sorting, integration, and analysis. Specifically, the data gathered from interviews underwent the six-step thematic analysis method of Braud and Clarke. The qualitative study found that legal communication is not the mere translation of legal concepts, but a recontextualization through a series of popularization strategies, which are enabled by facilitative practices. Results also showed that the most prominently employed popularization strategies were the use of exemplification and the use of scenarios. Based on these findings, legal communication in the Philippine context needs to be grounded on relatable, everyday situations for it to find value in development communication praxis.
Author Information
Jamil Creado, University of the Philippines Los Baños, Philippines
Aileen Macalintal, University of the Philippines Los Baños, Philippines
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