Samuel I. Cabbuag

Relatively little is known about how loneliness is subjectively experienced, interpreted and managed by men negotiating contemporary masculinities. We undertook a scoping review of qualitative studies examining men’s lived experiences and management of loneliness. Eight themes reveal that men’s loneliness (1) often stems from alienation, difficulties expressing vulnerability and challenges forming authentic connections and (2) arises through negotiating competing masculine ideals, balancing stoicism and self-sufficiency with care and emotional expression. These tensions produce (3) lonely-emotion complexes comprising positive and negative emotions (for example, shame, anxiety, relief and hope) associated with loss, rebuilding and meaningful belonging and (4) the intertwining of loneliness with psychological distress, stigma and maladaptive silence, social withdrawal, substance use, suicidality and hypermasculine responses. Men’s loneliness is further shaped by (5) physical and digital spaces that foster either safety, recognition and belonging or exclusion and isolation and (6) having intersecting identities related to migration, race, sexuality, family roles and cultural backgrounds recognized and affirmed. Men manage loneliness by (7) adopting hybrid masculine strategies that balance autonomy, self-protection and self-development with vulnerability and connection across changing social contexts and relationships and (8) developing authentic, emotionally safe, dependable and personalized relationships where they feel heard, respected, useful and able to contribute meaningfully to others. We conclude that men’s loneliness is a dynamic emotional and relational process shaped by competing masculinities, intersecting social contexts and lonely-emotion complexes. Addressing men’s loneliness requires approaches that move beyond individual pathology to foster socially and emotionally safe environments that support diverse masculine identities, authentic belonging and meaningful connection.

This paper examines young content creators engaging in what I will call algorithmic creativity , drawing on the theory of the entrepreneurial self . Drawing on research on creativity, emotions, and influencer and creator studies, I explore how young content creators in the Philippines use creativity within the creator economy and the challenges they face in pursuing creative work. This paper is part of a larger study on influencer cultures in the Philippines, and empirical data are drawn from digital ethnography and semi-structured interviews with thirty content creators. Findings include the use of storytelling and digital tools for content creation, and challenges such as time management and exposure to external forces, including brands and platforms. The findings imply that young content creators engage in emotional labor in pursuing creativity in digital spaces. The unintended consequence is the emergence of algorithmic creativity as creativity becomes increasingly linked to algorithmic recognition. The findings ultimately reveal how young content creators are both enabled and limited as they navigate the uneven power relations between platforms, creators, and audiences.

Children have become more commonplace on Filipino social media, where they often achieve virality, become memes, and later be invited on television. This article aims to provide an overview of the phenomenon of child influencers in the Philippines, a relatively young nation, given that one out of three Filipinos is aged 15 and below. I present two contexts in understanding child influencers: First, children are part of the larger entertainment industry; and second, family values are essential within Philippine society. Using a case study approach, I present two examples of child influencers who transitioned from being a “meme persona” to a celebrity and content creator, as well as child influencers who are part of “family influencer” units. I conclude this article by offering insights into future research on child influencers in the Filipino context.

This study investigates gray areas of contemporary political campaigning from a political economy perspective. Using qualitative field and digital methods, computational methods, and economic modeling, it analyzes the scope, scale, and cost of commissioning social media influencers in the 2022 Philippine Elections across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok. The researchers find that there is a high demand for influencers to campaign for candidates, characterized by premium and dynamic incentives under informal and obscure arrangements. We identified 1425 influencer accounts across the four social media platforms that engage in covert political campaigning and categorized them into seven types. The cost of these influencer-led campaigns is estimated to range from USD 27M following a pay-per-post compensation model, to USD 10.9M using a retainer model. This article serves as a model for both election research and election policy by providing a modular framework that addresses knowledge gaps in various country contexts.

Studies on digital platforms and online incivility have established that uses of humour can lean towards cyberbullying and hate speech. Focusing on TikTok's affordances and cultures of online incivility, this paper studies how TikTok influencers and their audiences manoeuvre legal-but-harmful humour. Specifically, we study how online incivility has become an accepted and negotiated practice in the Filipino context through the phenomenon of ‘dogshows’, where users throw jabs at individuals using derogatory humour and provocative memes. Through online observation and textual analysis of TikTok posts and their corresponding comment sections, we demonstrate how online incivility is subtly amplified through humour and play, and how Gen Z and young children became both objects and producers of these dogshows. We argue that while there is already peer surveillance at work on TikTok, there needs to be more deliberation between TikTok's policies and at-risk groups to make the platform a more civil space.