Ambivalent Humor, Vernacular Agency: The Diskarte Continuum and Qualitative Theorizing from the Global South

This article examines how Filipino TikTok users negotiate the viral “Diploma o Diskarte” debate through humor, revealing ambivalence as a constitutive modality of digital participation. Using multimodal critical discourse analysis of widely circulated videos and reception analysis of audience comments, we show that diskarte—Filipino resourceful agency—is neither a fixed trait nor a simple binary of compliance and resistance. Instead, it emerges as a communicative repertoire enacted across a continuum of survivalist, strategic, relational, entrepreneurial, and subversive practices. Humor operates as both critique and camouflage, allowing users to surface structural inequities while preserving social harmony. From these patterns, we inductively generate the Diskarte Continuum Framework, a culturally grounded model that theorizes ambivalence as central to communicative agency in precarious conditions. By foregrounding vernacular epistemologies, this study demonstrates how qualitative theorizing from the Global South advances broader debates in communication about media ambivalence, agency, and digital culture.