PHENOMENOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON POWER AND VULNERABILITY IN CYBERSPACE BY FILIPINO YOUTH

Implications to Church in Dialogue with Digital Culture

Abstract

This article focuses on selected students’ reflections in Philosophy
and Gender courses at De La Salle University in the Philippines.
These musings are about their engagement of, with, and in
cyberspace particularly through virtual games and social networks
using a philosophical method known as Phenomenology. Through
phenomenology, students critically examined their own experience as
they navigated cyberspace and how such experiences impacted on
the way they have understood themselves, their gender identities,
and even sexual orientation. The activity enabled them to reflect
deeply into their own engagement and whether such made them
empowered or vulnerable. These engagements by young people are a
special import to the Church which is highlighted by Pope Benedict                                                                                                                                                                          XVI in his 47th World Day of Communications Message (2013)1 where
he acknowledges that the “development of digital social networks
which are helping to create a new “agora”, an open public square in
which people share ideas, information and opinions, and in which
new relationships and forms of community can come into being.”