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UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Tuning in to Survive: Media and Disaster Mitigation in Post-Yolanda Philippines Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3bm2c0z5 Author Guyton, Shelley Publication Date 2021 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 4.0 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Tuning in to Survive: Media and Disaster Mitigation in Post-Yolanda Philippines A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology by Shelley Tuazon Guyton March 2021 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Christina Schwenkel, Chairperson Dr. Sally Ness Dr. Derick Fay Copyright by Shelley Tuazon Guyton 2021 The Dissertation of Shelley Tuazon Guyton is approved: __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside This dissertation is dedicated to the survivors and victims of Typhoon Yolanda. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I reflect with gratitude toward the many, many interested individuals and organizations who have helped this research move through every step. Although I am unable to acknowledge everyone by name here, I hope you, the reader, can feel as you read the text that the perspectives and hundreds of people fulfilled this research. First and foremost, I am grateful to the Taclobanons willing to share their experiences and perspectives with a foreign student. I have been humbled by your bravery in reliving painful moments, and in communicating to me and your local authorities that something must be done. I cannot thank you by name because I choose to keep my participants’ identities masked to ensure their protection. But, please know that you have been the most important part of this project. All stages of this project were made possible by the availability of funding institutions available to anthropologists-in-training: Friends of Anthropology Travel Award from the University of California, Riverside (UCR), Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship from the United States Department of Education, Humanities Graduate Student Research Grant (UCR), Graduate Student Research Mentorship Program (UCR), Alumni Graduate Research Travel Award (UCR), Dissertation Research Grant (UCR), Dissertation Year Program (UCR). I am lucky to have grown in a supportive degree program. Thank you to my dissertation advisor, Dr. Christina Schwenkel, for expertly guided me though each complex challenge of becoming an anthropologist. Thank you to my dissertation committee members Dr. Sally Ness and Dr. Derick Fay for your inspiration and encouragement. Thank you to my qualifying exam committee Dr. Sarita See for your example of how to give back to the Filipino community v through scholarship. I am grateful to the UCR staff—Anna Wire, Becky Campbell, Tiara Caldwell, Sharon Shanahan, Lilia Liderbach-Vega and Amanda Wong—for your expertise navigating the university systems and your dedication to helping us graduate students make it through the program. I have learned about language and life from my Tagalog and Waray-Waray language instructors—Tita Precy Ruedas, Ate Clem Montero, Ate Emily and Ate Ibeth—and I am grateful to include hold their understandings of Filipino cultures. I benefitted from thinking through theoretical and methodological aspects of the project with the goodwill and feedback from both professionals and fellow scholars-in-training at academic gatherings: Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Science and Technology Studies Retreat (University of California, Davis), Invisible Photographer Asia, Digital Media and Borders: Infrastructures, Mobilities, and Practices across Asia and Beyond (Lingnan University, Hong Kong), Philippines Anthropology @ 100: International Conference Marking the Centennial of Philippine Anthropology (University of the Philippines, Diliman), James Young Colloquium (University of California, Riverside), Singapore Graduate Forum on Southeast Asian Studies (National University of Singapore), American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, and the UC Berkeley-UCLA Graduate Student Workshop in Southeast Asian Studies. Co-working spaces and dialogue created together with my fellow students and friends were as vital to this project as to my soul. Thank you to my peer group support: Southeast Asian Studies Graduate Student Association (UCR), Women’s Writing Group (UCR), Student Association of Graduate Anthropologists (UCR), Graduate Students Against Anti-Blackness (UCR). Thank you to Theresa Heindel for being my “diss sis” from Day One. It is very special to me that we could share every step of this journey and experience together all the twists and vi turns, highs and lows as we grow into our new lives as anthropologists. Thank you to friends and fellow students whose positivity and vulnerability have kept me moving forward at certain difficulties throughout the long 8 years: Magnolia Yang Sao Yia, Sophea Seng, Xiomara Forbez, Elizabeth Stella, Chari Hamratanaphon, Karimah Richards, Steph Miller, Carlo Valle and Fort Remigio. My loved ones have supported and participated in my dinner-table-thinking, showed up for my frustrations and failures, and reassured me that this was a worthwhile pursuit. Thank you to Helen Guyton for always sharing enthusiasm and excitement for my research ideas. Thank you to Miles Guyton for long walks and idea hashing sessions. Thank you to my life twin Marissa Guyton for always picking up the phone, and for finding magical ways to both strengthen and heal me. You have carried me through every page. Thank you to Maria Aguirre Benitez for always reminding me of who I am without the dissertation. Thank you to my loving partner, Jerry Elmido, who always told me it would be OK, no matter how many times I needed to hear it. vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Tuning in to Survive: Media and Disaster Mitigation in Post-Yolanda Philippines by Shelley Tuazon Guyton Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Anthropology University of California, Riverside, March 2021 Dr. Christina Schwenkel, Chairperson “We did not know we would be swimming,” residents of San Jose Beach neighborhood in Tacloban City, Philippines told me, reflecting on Typhoon Yolanda wave surges. However, storm surge warnings circulated in official state updates. How could they have not known? Something was lost in communication. This dissertation shows how low-income coastal dwellers experience inequality within the disaster communication infrastructure of the Philippines, and examines the stakes involved in typhoon communication as a tool for survival in a time of global climate change. Communication gaps and assumptions made in disaster media have created the conditions for death, injury and property loss. I show in this dissertation that vulnerability and inequalities are not only experienced in disaster, but are also produced within the disaster mitigation and relief infrastructures. This dissertation is based on long-term ethnographic research conducted in Tacloban City, Philippines in the years after Super-typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) caused extensive death and destruction in the region. viii Communication is an integral part of experiencing disaster. Residents of the Philippine Islands receive on average 19 typhoons every year. Typhoon alerts help affected people prepare for and survive oncoming typhoons. Beyond that, media like television and radio help interpret state-issued alerts to the public, or act as hotlines to answer questions. While these alerts are produced with the expectation that the message will make its way to all residents equally, that is not the reality. Residents across the Philippines experience disaster communication in different ways—according to their relationship to the infrastructure (access to media, their relationship to their local government, and more). This project asks: How do people experience the disaster communication infrastructure unequally? How does infrastructural inequality affect the ability of families and neighborhoods to respond to and survive a typhoon? I show throughout the dissertation that vulnerability and inequalities are not only experienced in disaster, but are also created in the space of disaster and media infrastructure. In particular I consider how vulnerabilities are produced through lived interactions with the disaster media infrastructure, historically-rooted marginalizations from infrastructure, and experiences of temporality through media and disaster. ix CONTENTS Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…………1 Section One: History of Disaster Governance in the Philippines Chapter 1: Colonial Science, Technology and Typhoon Monitoring………………………………43 Chapter 2: Nationalizing Disaster………………………………………………………………………………….75 Interlude Between Sections: Typhoons in an Uncertain World………………………………………………. 104 Section Two: Tuning in at San Jose Beach Chapter 3: Producing Uncertainty in Emergencies………………………………………………………112 Chapter 4: “Prepared na kami” (We are prepared)…………………………………………………….147 Chapter 5: Typhoon Temporalities in Climate Change………………………………………………..176 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………205 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………212 x LIST OF FIGURES Introduction Figure 0.1: Satellite image of Typhoon Yolanda