Ang Nararapat: Human Rights Discourse on Facebook in the Context of the 2016-2022 Philippine Drug War

The state-sanctioned Philippine drug war from 2016 to 2022 is a major point of contention and controversy for Philippine politics, media, and human rights. Human rights’ foundations and effectiveness are rooted in discourse, making the way human rights are articulated across various contexts an important field of study for both academics and practitioners, whether on the national or international level. This study takes comments from Facebook posts on the drug war, applying critical discourse analysis to examine their content and their underlying ideologies. Furthermore, these posts were created by three news outlets on Facebook from 2016 to 2022, demonstrating how the discourse can change over the years under the policy influenced by different newsmaking perspectives. The data reveals insight into how Facebook users articulate their discourse positions when it comes to the human rights during the drug war, which opens up new avenues of research towards the understanding of human rights in the contemporary era and its development.