Learning political (in)efficacy from TV news

• From the Asian Barometer (Philippine data): news exposure and voting are high, (internal) political efficacy is low
• Internal political efficacy indicators (Niemi et al, 1991, p. 1408)
• What do Filipino voters (not) learn from TV news? What the two top-rating news programs covered during the first five months of the 2016 election period (Jan. 10 to May 8, 2016, excluding the 30 days after election, Comelec Resolution 9981)
• Why TV news? Why not newspapers?
• AGB Nielsen Philippines TV ratings, via pep.ph
• The literature (scholar.google.com, DLSU EBSCO) 
• Online archives on YouTube: GMA 24 Oras ('24 Oras News Today'), daily episodes; ABS TV Patrol ('ABS-CBN News') search by month, stories
• Limitation - Since it is up to the stations whether to upload the material to their YouTube channels, the online archives may not totally correspond to what is actually broadcast.
• Key questions: Does the story help the viewer to
  
  • ... be well qualified to participate in politics?
  • ... have a pretty good understanding of the important political issues facing our country?
  • ... be better informed about politics and government than most people?
  • ... make politics and government less complicated that the viewer can understand what's going on?
  • ... have any say about what government does?
  • ... think that public officials care much what people like her thinks?
• What stories to select. Coding variables. See The British Election Study codeframe

Campaign period: started Feb. 9, 2016

Date	24 Oras	TV Patrol
9 Feb	Story title (slide to mm:ss)	Miriam-Bongbong, nangampanya sa Ilocos Norte Duterte, bagong chairman ng PDP-Laban
10 Feb	Story title (slide to mm:ss)	Story title
11 Feb	Story title (slide to mm:ss)	Story title

Sample

Date	24 Oras	TV Patrol
9 Nov	Story title (slide to mm:ss)	Bagong disqualification case inihain laban kay Grace Poe
5 Nov	Story title (slide to mm:ss)	Isang nag-DNA test para kay Poe, masaya sa resulta
30 Oct	Story title (slide to mm:ss)	Libu-libong botante, humahabol sa pagpaparehistro

Notes on inclusiveness

From Why Nations Fail (Acemoğlu & Robinson, 2012)

Inclusive Political Institutions --> Inclusive Economic Institutions --> Growth

Inclusive	Extractive
Democracy	Colonialism
Strong centralized state	Weak state
Innovation
Technological change
Incentives	Restrictions
Egalitarian	Privileged elites
Reform
Openness
Rule of law
Level playing field
Gradual change
Participation, access	Discrimination
Competition	Monopoly
Market economy	Machine
Free, independent media
Secure property rights

e-books at the DLSU library

Why e-books?

Once borrowed, a printed book is no longer available to other would-be borrowers until the copy is returned. With an e-book, all bonafide students and their professors can "borrow" it simultaneously albeit for a fixed period of time. At DLSU such students must also have a library account.

[Read more on this idea in Nicholas Negroponte's being digital (Vintage, 1996).]

What e-titles do we have?

So far, the DLSU library has titles from e-brary Gale, Science Direct, Springer. These databases include non-books, i.e. articles in magazines, Web sites, and research journals, as well as real books.

For WRITING A52 and A54, I found Tate & Taylor's Scholastic Journalism (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).

You may read it online, or download in parts or in whole. The words "Your institution has unlimited access to this book" are most soothing.

A note on full download. It means you can keep the file on your computer for 14 days. The download expires after two weeks because of a copyright-protection technology called DRM (digital rights management). The PDF is in your computer but the DRM prevents you from displaying it. Any amateur geek will know how to disarm a DRM. But look at our ELGA No.4.

On the other hand, chapter downloads become yours forever. Then again, you can divide the work of which chapters to download and you will have the whole book anyway. Again, ELGA No. 4.

Downloading an e-book legally and ethically

1. Login. When you choose to download, the system will ask you to sign in. Do so as follows:
   Email/Username name.surname@dlsu.edu.ph
   Password [use your library password, not MLS]
2. Select device you are using. Click continue, Install (Adobe Digital Editions, or if you already have this), Download the book. If you choose to install Adobe Digital Editions, you will also be asked to install the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Installer


3. What you will get is an acsm file. This not the book. The book will download as a PDF, a protected PDF. Adobe Digital Editions will use the acsm file to link you to the protected PDF.

When your book expires

You can borrow again, of course.

Shorter travel time to Baguio

It is now possible to reach Baguio from Manila in less than 5 hours, including two stops.

The bulk of the trip consists of a breeze along three interconnected expressways:

NLEX-SCTEX	164 km Balintawak-Tarlac	P322
TPLEX	70 km Tarlac-Urdaneta	216
Kennon		15
Total	234 km	P553

If you drive at a boring 80 km/h, you should cover the 230-plus-km stretch in under three hours; the legal 100 km/h in about 30 minutes less.

Thankfully, just before the 2016 Holy Week, an integrated NLEX-SCTEX greeted motorists. The Dau exit, where the buildup could take as long as a half hour, is now a thing of the past.

From Urdaneta, it's 34 km on the MacArthur highway until Rosario, La Union. In another 36 km you see the Baguio General Hospital, the first real sign that you are in the Summer Capital.

The expressways cut driving time significantly. At the Urdaneta TPLEX exit, you can see that work is in progress on the final leg to Rosario which will probably be open next year. That means an even shorter traffic time from Balintawak to Kennon.

There are some problems the links can't solve: the standstill around the Baguio plaza and a vehicular version of the Hunger Games at Balintawak.

Converting RCA VOC files to MP3

What worked for me: I downloaded the VSDC free audio converter, opened the VOC file, chose a target format (I chose MP3). Done!

I like the RCA VR 5231. It's small, light and records faithfully (I hear every one clearly from the office meeting). It's got a USB cable that allows easy PC transfers. Until you discover that your files are in the .VOC format which your Windows Media Player or VLC player won't play.

I tried online VOC to MP3 converters. Nah. I downloaded at least three other converters. Nyet. They were limited to five minutes only, and I had three hours worth of talk time.

I was almost resigned to playing back from the recorder itself except that the 5231 doesn't let you go to specific parts of the audio file. Pressing the rewind/fast forward button take you to the previous/next file. The "off" button takes you back to the beginning of the recording.

It is possible to record in the WAV format which conventional players read. Just set the options to HQ. The only downside -- if you can call it that -- is that recording time is cut from 800 hours to 68.

To reset recorder to HQ

1. Press on
2. Press info/menu for about two seconds. "FOLDER" will flash
3. Again, press info/menu twice quickly
4. Toggle the +/- button until you see HQ
5. Press off