Profile

I completed my PhD in Communication and New Media at the National University of Singapore and I am interested in the social implications of communication technology. In particular, my research focuses on exploring the intersections of digital cultures and marginality-- understanding the way users from political, economic, or cultural margins use new media, and how such digital media engagements facilitate social transformations and create new modes of understanding culture/politics. I have also developed research interest on technology, organizations, and organizing in the global South, exploring how these technological engagements impact labor and reinforce, challenge, or produce social inequalities. My research appear in New Media & Society, Media, Culture and Society, The Information Society, Communication, Culture and Critique, among other journals, as well as in edited volumes. A book I co-edited (with S.S. Lim), Asian Perspectives on Digital Culture, Emerging Phenomena, Enduring Concepts was published by Routledge under its internationalising media studies series. I am currently working on a book project (with E. Cabalquinto) on YouTube and the Brokerage of Social Transactions in the Postcolony, which is set to be published by Amsterdam University Press.

My research interests reflect my educational background and work experiences. Prior to communication & media, I studied the  Politics of Alternative Development (Masters in Development Studies from Institute of Social Studies-Erasmus University, The Netherlands)  and Political Science (from the University of the Philippines). Prior to academia, I also worked with non-profit research institutions in the Philippines such as Ideacorp, Inc., focusing on Internet governance and telecommunications policy, and provided consultancy work for the programming of microfinance interventions to assist underprivileged communities. I  worked with the Presidential Management Staff-Office of the President of the Republic of the Philippines for over seven years, providing decision-information and research for programming and assessing various development interventions in the fields of e-Governance, universal access, and human security. I completed a commissioned research on mobile applications in the Philippines and Africa (with Mendes, S; Alampay, E.; and Soriano, E.) and on telecommunications and Internet governance policy (with Lallana, E.).  I lived in China for a year to conduct a research project on telecenter and rural livelihoods in Hebei as a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Sociology and Anthropology of Peking University under a grant from the Ford Foundation/ Asian Scholarship Foundation. From end December until April 2017, I took on the Australia-APEC Women in Research Fellowship hosted by the Centre for Communication, Politics and Culture of the School of Media and Communication at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in Australia, where I consolidated my research on youth digital cultures in low-income communities.

I am currently Professor of Communication in De La Salle University (DLSU) in the Philippines and Research Fellow at the La Salle Institute of Governance. I co-lead a digital ethnography project on online freelance work and digital labor in the Philippines under the Newton Tech4Dev Network, a networking collaboration between DLSU and University of Leicester and funded by the British Council. I am currently Principal Investigator for the project, 'How Filipino Youth Identify and Act on Social Media Bullying and Harassment', supported by Facebook under their Content Policy Research stream. 

I support Open Access research as part of the Steering Committee of MediArxiv, a free, community-led digital archive for media, film, and communication research. I also serve as an Associate Editor of Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication, Media and Society. I am also part of the Consortium on Democracy and Disinformation in the Philippines, a network of journalists, academics, activists, and bloggers collaborating on research and advocacy work on disinformation.
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Please check out this site to access my papers and presentations and please contact me if you want a copy or would like to discuss them (comments welcome!). I'm interested in discussing global media and digital cultures so do share related papers/ ideas you might have for research collaboration. Thanks and email me at cheryllsoriano (at) gmail.com