Popular Culture in the Philippines

through Theoretical Lens (1)

Lecture 7
 Learning Outcomes:

• Define and understand the concepts of Semiotics

and Uses of Gratification Theory
• Integrate Semiotics and Gratifications Theory
within the construct of Philippine Pop Culture
READ ME!
Do you use emoji? If yes, when do
you use them? If no, why not?
Which emoji describes your mood right now?
Draw it on your paper and hold it up for your
class.
 Semiotics and Popularity of Emoji

SEMIOTICS
• also called semiology, the study of signs and sign-using behavior.
• It was defined by one of its founders, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de
Saussure, as the study of “the life of signs within society.”
Emojis and Emoticons – Their Birth and a Brief History

✓ Here the entire mood or the tone

of the conversation is created by
the emojis, devoid of which the
entire conversation would seem
quiet formal and curt.
✓ The emojis here provide a more
friendly and casual speech like
quality to the text which makes
it more of a direct extension of
speech.
 EMOTICON
• is made from the two words
‘emotion’ and ‘icon’.
• is a typographic display of facial
expression like this one :-) or :-(
which found its first appearance
in the 1980s in America
EMOJI
• is a Japanese term where e stands
for picture and moji stands for
character or letter
• are much more fleshed out versions
of emotions which resemble
pictograms and they were not just
limited to facial expressions but
also included a pantheon of
objects, activities and events along
with the facial expressions.
• came much later in Japan
 Emoticons and Emojis – Are they the same?
• Emojis literally meaning picture • Emoticons are typographic
characters, are images that one characters like this :-) :-( ;-) or
can select to accompany or even :-D, which actually have to
replace a text in instant be typed out.
messaging, social media and • Emoticons can be called a text
emails. based precursors to emojis which
came about much later in the
1990s in Japan.

<3
Both performed the same function though emojis brought in a much more variety.
AOL created a range of 15 emoticons on this basis
for their chat rooms which are as follows:
1887 – An unpleasant proposal
• Ambrose Bierce, An American
poet, journalist, and writer of
satirical essays and short stories,
who is best known today for his
collection of misanthropic
definitions, proposed the smiley
face and other simple emoticons be
added as new punctuation
characters in his essay, “For
Brevity and Clarity.”
1982 – The Joke Marker
• A computer scientist Scott Fahlman of
the Carnegie Mellon University
realized his words were failing him
when communicating with others on a
forum, he found that i was difficult to
convey that some posts were meant to
be taken as a joke. t
• He then proposed to the University’s
message board to include a colon, a
dash and a bracket :-) as a joke maker.
 1995 – The Birth of the Modern Day Emoji
• In 1995, a Japanese telemarketing
company called the NTT Docomo
created a heart symbol for their
pagers and the world’s first
integrated mobile internet service
called the i-mode and paved the
way for the birth of the modern Shigetaka Kurita, commonly known as
day emojis. the father of the emoji, who worked for
the company created the first 176 emojis
for cell phones, which was initially used
only on the NTT network.
2007 – Emoji becomes 2011 – Emoji Meets iPhone
Mainstream • Emojis went on to become a
• Emojis became mainstream truly global phenomenon only
throughout the globe only when Apple enabled an emoji
when Google included keyboard on the iPhone
them in their Gmail and
Gchat.
Our favorite Filipino expressions in Emojis
Semiotics of Emoji: The Rise of Visual Language in the
Age of Internet – Laura Kerslake and Rupert Wegerif
• Emoji are primarily used to add emotion to digital communications.
• They tend to add a positive tone to messages, seen by their users as ‘fun’
(p. 179).
• This is an important compensation for the relative lack of contextual clues
in online communication of the kind that are so important to guiding
interpretation in face to face communication.
• Emoji used online can play a similar role to facial expression and gesture
and are often to undermine seriousness with a sense of shared humanity.
• The adaptability of human communication is likely to prevail, and the
continued use of emoji will depend considerably on the form that new
technological development takes as much as any inherent value in emoji
communication itself.
 Key Points:
How do you express emotions when you send a text message? With emoji, of course!
The first emoji set came out in Japan in 1999. It included a few faces, some weather icons, and a
variety of objects you’d see around the city. Since then, hundreds of images have been added, and
Emoji has become its own language.
Is Emoji a universal language? Though a smile is a smile in every corner of the world, other images aren’t as clear-
cut. Are you joking or flirting when you send someone a winking emoji?
Emoji are sometimes used as a secret language or code.
Close friends use emoji to express inside jokes. Secret codes aren’t always harmless

Some critics say that the use of emoji is a big step backward for mankind. After all, humans moved from
communicating with pictographs to developing spoken and written language after learning the limits of drawings. Is
the fastest-growing language making humanity lazy?
Despite these criticisms, emoji are not going away anytime soon.
In 2015, Oxford Dictionary named an emoji (Face with Tears of Joy) its Word of the Year.
 Assessment 4:
Answer the question.
• What FIVE emoji would describe your personality the best?
• Save and rename your PDF file: LAST NAME, First_Assessment#
• (See sample answer format)

The eye-rolling emoji The dancing girl

best describes my mood When my students Morning
emoji was my mood
failed to follow the personality – Lifetime
when I am browsing whenever I
given instructions. loving. personality emoji
Social Media. accomplished all my
– I don’t care.
tasks and felt like I
was at the top of the
world.
What mobile games do you play?
How many hours do you spend
playing?
Uses and Gratifications
Theory in
MOBILE LEGENDS
 What Is Uses and Gratifications Theory?
• Uses and gratifications theory asserts that people use media to
gratify specific wants and needs.
• Uses and gratifications characterizes people as active and
motivated in selecting the media they choose to consume.
• The theory relies on two principles: media users are active in
their selection of the media they consume, and they are aware
of their reasons for selecting different media options.
 What Is Uses and Gratifications Theory?
• Uses and gratifications theory asserts that people use media to
gratify specific wants and needs.
• Uses and gratifications characterizes people as active and
motivated in selecting the media they choose to consume.
• The theory relies on two principles: media users are active in
their selection of the media they consume, and they are aware
of their reasons for selecting different media options.
 History of Mobile Legends in the Philippines
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (aka Mobile Legends, ML, or MLBB) is already a five-
year-old game, and yet– it does not show any signs of slowing down.
Initially released in November 2016, the Moonton-developed mobile multiplayer-online
based arena (MOBA) game grew to become one of the biggest mobile esports games in
2021.
In early 2020, ML had over one billion installs with an average active player base of
around 100 million per month. In particular, there are over 100 million registered users
and 25 million monthly active users in the Philippines alone.
As of March 2021, ML has 78 Million monthly players logging in to the game.
Its massive popularity and influence have been so consistent that the mobile
title was even among the games chosen for the first medal event eSports
competition at the 2019 Southeast Asian Games.
 Related Research: Mobile games on the basis of uses and gratifications
approach: A comparison of the mobile game habits of university and high
school students
It was found that, compared to high school students, university
students were more inclined to believe that mobile games were
produced for marketing purposes.
The study revealed that high school and university students
played mobile games to gratify the following motives:
✓(1) self-realization/personal gratification (34.754%),
✓(2) rivalry/excitement (8.765%),
✓(3) social interaction (5.482%),
✓(4) addiction (4.995%) and
✓(5) escape (4.783%).
 Factors: Self-realization/personal gratification,
rivalry/excitement and social interaction), it was found that male
participants played mobile games more than female participants
did.
Female students played mobile games to escape from their
problems more than males did
It was also found that there was a decline in their tendency to
play mobile games to gratify their rivalry/excitement motive
beginning from the second grade in high school education.
 The study revealed that mobile gaming to satisfy self
realization/personal gratification needs was more prevalent in
the first and second years of high school education.
It was also found that 12.4% of the participants paid money
to play mobile games or to pass to a higher level, while 87.6%
of them preferred free games.
It should be highlighted that young people are inclined to
play mobile games in search of self-gratification.
Overuse of technology shows that young people turn to the
cyber world to build a relationship or communicate.
Given the increasing popularity of mobile learning,
mobile games could serve as educational tools.
The responsibility of parents for the
changes in their children’s attitudes
towards living in the cyber world
should also be reconsidered.
The Traditional Filipino Games: Status Check Among
Generation Z - Joel Asuncion Asian College of Technology International
Foundation
• In conclusion, even with the availability of technology among the
participants, they still chose to play traditional Filipino games.
• With 56.66 percent of the participants who still play the game which is
part of the Filipino culture and heritage, it can be deduced that the
Filipino Games even with the new generation (Generation Z) are still
alive.
• The games which are products of variety of cultures (Tupas, 2016)
remain the number 1 pastime of the younger generation.
• But even if it is still played today, the study shows an alarming
percentage of 43.33 percent among the participants who do not play
the games anymore.
 Assessment 5:
Answer the following questions:
• Save and rename your PDF file: LAST NAME,
First_Assessment5

1. What online/mobile games character describes your

personality?
A. Online / Mobile Game: LOL
B. Champion / Hero: Malphite
C. Reason:
2. What is childhood memory of playing traditional Filipino
games? Answer this question 75 words.
References:
• Booc, R. P., Rafaela, K. B., Torres, M. J., Bulawan, R. P., II, L. C. J., Cortuna, I. J. M., &
Asuncion, J. E. (2019). THE TRADITIONAL FILIPINO GAMES: STATUS CHECK
AMONG GENERATION Z. Theoretical & Applied Science, 78(10), 150–152.
https://doi.org/10.15863/tas.2019.10.78.25
• Bulduklu, Y. (2017). Mobile games on the basis of uses and gratifications approach: A
comparison of the mobile game habits of university and high school students.
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 25(5–
6), 901–917. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856517748159
• High Ph, G. (2021, August 18). History of Mobile Legends. Game High.
https://www.gamehigh.ph/history-of-mobile-legends/
• Kishimoto, R. T., Prasetyo, Y. T., Persada, S. F., & Redi, A. A. N. P. (2021). Filipino
Generation Z on Mobile Legends during COVID-19: A Determination of Playtime and
Satisfaction. International Journal of Information and Education Technology, 11(8), 381–
386. https://doi.org/10.18178/ijiet.2021.11.8.1538
• Petcoff, O. W. (2019). Review of The semiotics of emoji: The rise of visual language in
the age of the Internet. Semiotica, 2019(227), 335–340. https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2017-
0143
• What Is Uses and Gratifications Theory? Definition and Examples. (n.d.). ThoughtCo.
Retrieved September 16, 2021, from https://www.thoughtco.com/uses-and-gratifications-
theory-4628333