Seven concepts make up the program's public vocabulary. Each definition is quoted from the publication where it is defined, and the numbered notes at the end of the page give the sources. The explanation beneath each definition is plain-language wording for general readers.

Trust cultures

Definition. “Meso-level repertoires through which patterned expectations about authority become socially organized.”¹

In plain words. People do not decide whether to trust an official or an institution from scratch. They draw on shared, learned ways of judging authority: what a decent leader owes, what counts as a betrayal, what can be forgiven. Those shared ways of judging are trust cultures. They sit between the individual and the nation: they belong to communities, publics and institutions, not to “Filipino culture” as a whole.

Where it shows up. Many Philippine publics judge authority through moral vocabularies such as hiya (shame), bait (goodness) and utang na loob (a debt of gratitude), alongside procedure and performance. Institutional metrics alone miss how these vocabularies shape verdicts on officials.²

What it is not. Not generalized trust, not national culture, and not legitimacy itself. It supplies the resources people use to judge legitimacy.

Relational legitimacy

Definition. “The evaluative process through which publics negotiate whether authority remains morally recognizable and socially bearable under concrete conditions of uncertainty.”³

In plain words. Legitimacy is not a fixed stock that a government has or lacks. People keep weighing whether those in power still behave in ways they recognize as right, and whether living under them is still bearable. That weighing happens in relationships: in encounters with officials, through the media, and through the people who stand between citizens and the state.

Where it shows up. In Pasig City, residents judged reformist local government by whether it felt accessible and responsive across face-to-face, online and service encounters, and by whether it treated them fairly and consistently.⁴

What it is not. Not trust, and not compliance. People can keep paying taxes and using services while withdrawing recognition.

Scandal constructivation

Definition. “A contested process of ‘constructivation’—wherein truth, blame, and legitimacy are performed and interpreted through culturally specific frameworks of trust.”⁵

In plain words. A scandal is not simply an exposed wrongdoing. It is built, as people argue over what really happened, who is to blame and what it says about those in power. How that argument goes depends on the trust cultures people bring to it, and the scandal in turn reshapes those cultures.

Where it shows up. An allegation becomes consequential when it stirs feeling, makes moral sense to its audience and fits a story people already tell. In the flood-control controversy, blame travelled along relationships and local publics formed around shared anger.⁶

What it is not. Not a synonym for scandalization, the general process. Constructivation names how trust cultures and the scandal shape each other.

Ambivalent governance

Definition. “A patterned mode of participation in which journalism’s authority is simultaneously affirmed and contested through everyday talk and mediated circulation.”⁷

In plain words. People keep following scandal news and keep sharing it, while doubting the outlets that report it. They lean on journalism and argue with it at the same time. That mixed stance is a pattern, not confusion.

Where it shows up. In three Philippine cities, readers engaged scandal news by balancing what they read against their own needs, by tiring of mediated outrage, and by condemning wrongdoing from a distance.⁸

What it is not. “Governance” here means how authority is ordered through communication, not public administration.

Repair without correction

Definition. “The communicative processes through which governing authority is sustained and reworked in ongoing interactions among institutions, journalists, experts, political actors, and publicly articulated expectations, even when controversy remains unresolved, institutional correction remains incomplete, and public consensus has yet to emerge.”⁹

In plain words. After a scandal, institutions often hold on without fixing what went wrong. They keep working relationships going, retell the story in narrower terms, remind everyone they are needed, spread responsibility thin, and lower what the public expects of them. Authority is repaired; the failure is not corrected.

Where it shows up. After the Philippine Department of Health suspended the Dengvaxia dengue vaccine in 2017, it stayed under investigation while it kept monitoring recipients and running immunization. It was at once an object of accountability and an indispensable provider of health governance, and that indispensability kept its authority in place.¹⁰

What it is not. It explains; it does not recommend. It is also not trust repair or restoration.

Accrued damage

Definition. “The sedimentation of repeated yet individually survivable disappointments that gradually recalibrate public expectations regarding governance, accountability, and institutional responsiveness.”¹¹

In plain words. No single scandal breaks public faith. Each one is survived. But the disappointments pile up, and over time people quietly expect less of their institutions. People keep demanding accountability, but the damage lies in what they stop expecting.

Where it shows up. During the 2013 pork-barrel scandal, surveys showed wide anger at corruption and support for abolishing the fund, yet approval of the government's response held. Repeated scandals had taught publics that exposure alone would not bring structural repair.¹²

What it is not. Not rupture or collapse, and not apathy. It is slow and cumulative, and frustration persists alongside it.

Cognitive fragility

Definition. “Conditions in which cognition becomes uneven, effortful, interrupted, delayed, nonlinear, visibly scaffolded, or difficult to sustain according to dominant expectations of academic performance.”¹³

In plain words. Universities tend to treat steady, fast, unassisted thinking as a sign that a scholar is reliable and serious. When thinking is uneven, slowed, interrupted or visibly supported, colleagues often read it as a moral failing, long before anyone has broken a rule. The concept names those conditions so that the judgment passed on them can itself be examined.

Where it shows up. A late reply to an email is read as irresponsibility, and halting speech in a meeting as lack of preparation. Scholars who rely on visible support, from assistive technology to generative AI, can stay formally included while being quietly recast as less dependable.¹⁴

What it is not. Not a diagnosis, and not incapacity or deficiency. It can arise through neurodivergence, illness, exhaustion, emotional strain or precarity.

Notes

1. Karl Patrick R. Mendoza, “Filipino Public Life as a Moral–Relational Field: Toward a Philippine Sociological Agenda,” Philippine Sociological Review 74 (2026): 146–61, https://www.jstor.org/stable/48892856.
2. Karl Patrick R. Mendoza, Trust Cultures and the Politics of Relational Legitimacy: Rethinking Trust from the Global South (Routledge, forthcoming), introduction.
3. Mendoza, Trust Cultures, chapter on relational legitimacy.
4. Karl Patrick R. Mendoza et al., “Everyday Legitimacy in Reformist Governance,” Advances in Southeast Asian Studies, advance online publication, 2026, https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0148.
5. Karl Patrick R. Mendoza, “Scandal as Constructivation: Trust Cultures and the Politics of Legitimacy in Southeast Asia,” International Journal of Communication 19 (2025): 3279.
6. Karl Patrick R. Mendoza, “From ‘Robs to Riches’: Scandal Constructivation and the Ambivalent Work of Pagsasaayos,” Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints 74, no. 3 (2026): 449–66, https://doi.org/10.13185/2244-1638.5314.
7. Karl Patrick R. Mendoza et al., “Ambivalent Governance and Journalistic Authority,” Asian Communication Research 23, no. 1 (2026): 166–86, https://doi.org/10.20879/acr.2026.23.004.
8. Mendoza et al., “Ambivalent Governance.”
9. Karl Patrick R. Mendoza, “Repair without Correction: Institutional Authority and Enduring Controversy in Communication,” Journalism & Communication Monographs (forthcoming).
10. Mendoza, “Repair without Correction.”
11. Mendoza, Trust Cultures.
12. Mendoza, Trust Cultures, chapter on accrued damage.
13. Karl Patrick R. Mendoza, “When Thinking Is Judged: Academic Ethics and the Moralization of Cognition,” Journal of Academic Ethics 24 (2026): article 81, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-026-09762-z.
14. Mendoza, “When Thinking Is Judged.”