Karl Patrick R. Mendoza is an Associate Professor at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines and Vice-Chair of the Emerging Scholars Network of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). His research explores how trust, legitimacy, and care are mediated in public life, spanning trust studies, political communication, journalism, and critical discourse studies in the Global South.

Karl advances the concept of trust cultures—the moral and cultural frameworks through which publics interpret sincerity and authority—and extends it into a broader theory of relational sovereignties linking care, legitimacy, and belonging in postcolonial societies. His book, Navigating Trust, Journalism, and Health in the Age of Populism (Taylor & Francis, 2025), reinterprets the Dengvaxia vaccine scandal as a case of mediated trust and moral crisis.

His current research program has two streams. The first, “Scandal as Ambivalent Governance in the Global South,” rethinks scandal not simply as exposure or reform but as moral performance—an arena where sincerity, shame, and legitimacy are publicly negotiated. Drawing on political communication, cultural sociology, and affect theory, it treats scandal as a form of ambivalent governance that both challenges and stabilizes authority.

The second, “Bringing Back Political Modernization,” reopens a neglected strand of Philippine political thought by treating modernization not as linear rationalization but as moral and cultural negotiation. It recovers vernacular grammars of trust, submission (pagsunod), and care (pag-aalaga) that sustain democratic life amid systemic fragility. Through discourse analysis, archival work, and interpretive political inquiry, Karl reframes modernization as a process grounded in moral reasoning and relational ethics.

His publications appear in Media, Culture & Society, International Journal of Communication, Communication Teacher, and the Asia Pacific Social Science Review. Based in Pasay City, he continues to cultivate inclusive, dialogic spaces for emerging researchers working at the intersections of media, marginality, and democratic life.