ERNESTO G. SONIDO Jr MLIS (1967-2019)
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our STS Senior Lecturer Prof Ernesto “Juned” Sonido. He was 52.
Juned started out his career in fisheries and aquaculture as a graduate of UP Visayas College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences in 1990. After a short stint in managing fisheries related NGOs, he worked in science information abstracting services when the BPO industry in the Philippines was in its infancy. The development and prospects of this industry was the subject of his master’s thesis in Library and Information Science in 2003.
Afterwards, he further expanded his portfolio to cover social media and digital media and online reputation management. It is here where he helped government, non-government, civil society and people’s organizations and ordinary citizens, especially bloggers on how to manage their social media and online presence. He traveled around the Philippines, the ASEAN and the rest of Asia giving talks and workshops on social and digital media.
He had a major interest in politics and social media. Because of this he joined the UP College of Science Science and Society Program as a lecturer in 2013. He intended to establish social and digital media studies and research as part of the Science, Technology and Society (STS) courses. One of his first lectures at the UP was on Twitter and the Arab Spring where he told students, social media isn’t enough to effect change and that they must organize people and march on the streets.
Juned was a recognized social and digital media professional and blogger. His only partisanship is for the Filipino people and nation and not to any political party and color. He was working on the social and digital media course proposals for the masters and PhD in STS when death overtook him.
He is survived by his brother, sisters, nephews and nieces.
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Benjamin M Vallejo Jr PhD