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Virtual Democracy in Thailand: -.:: GEOCITIES.Ws Virtual Democracy in Thailand: Information Technology, Internet Political Message Board, and the Politics of Representation in Thailand after 1992: Pitch Pongsawat* ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The medium, or process, of our time- electronic technology- is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and reevaluate practically every thought, every action, and every institution formerly taken for granted." Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore (1967). The Medium is the Massage. P.8 The paper is an attempt to understand the current landscape of the relationship between media and politics in Thailand after the bloodshed event of 1992. Central to the discussion of this paper is the question of the origin, significance, and impact of new media technologies in relation to the politics of representation in Thailand, with a focus on Internet Political Message Board (IMB). I argue that although the conventional belief of looking at the positive relationship between the media and the rise of civil society-public sphere in Thailand is compelling, closer attention needs to be focused on both access to these technologies, and how the technologies operate. The discussion on the access to new information technologies tells us who is the "netcitizen" in Thailand. The discussion on how the technologies operate tells us to what extent technology is used to set the limit of democratic possibility in Thailand. My conclusions go beyond the general argument of pointing out the dominance of the middle class' power over the political agenda. I argue that the use of the new IMB technology in Thailand reveals that this middle class-led public sphere is contentious, unsustainable, and unable to resolve fundamental conflicts in Thailand due to the lack of trust among the participants. The lack * Lecturer: Department of Government, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok 10330, Thailand [[email protected]]. Ph.D. Student: Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California at Berkeley, CA 94720-1850 [[email protected]]. 2 of trust leads to self-censorship among Internet communities as we can see from both the content of the discussion and the creation of the limits of democratic possibility by certain forms of technology. The critical case that reveals the lack of trust among the participant is a dispute over the release of Internet Protocol (IP) address on the message board to reveal or to trace the "true" identity of the participants. This is especially the case when the discussion gets into the area of "politics" that centers around three major political issues; 1) the politics of personality, 2) the politics of development, and 3) the politics of memory. The lack of trust phenomenon can be traced back to the dominant claim of "mob discourse" or conspiracy theory that is a major political discursive practice since the 1970s political uprising and massacre. The structure of this paper is divided into three major parts. It starts with a general survey of contemporary Thailand's media and information technologies. The second part of this paper deals with a detailed discussion of IMB, with a focus on Pantip.com [http://www.pantip.com], the most popular IMB in Thailand. The final part raises the questions concerning the future roles of information technologies in Thailand's politics of representation and democratization. I) Information Technology, Media and Current Thai Politics: A General Survey In this section I will provide a general survey of how information technology has been used in the media with regards to Thai politics since the 1992 uprising. In sum there is both a continuation and an invention in terms of the types of political media and the types of technology in these media. Central to the new relationship between the media and politics in Thailand are three inter-related movements in the relationship between media and Thai politics. These three movements take place in five types of media. The three movements are 1) the freedom of speech movement, 2) the (freedom of) "speed" movement, and 3) the expansion of public sphere by 3 increasing levels of participation via "interactive" technology. The five major types of political media in contemporary Thailand include 1) newspapers, 2) civic radio stations, 3) television news stations (and news television), 4) polls, and 5) Internet message boards (IMBs). Three Major Movements in Media and Politics: 1. Freedom of Speech: Post 1992 politics saw a major leap in the guarantee of freedom of speech in Thai politics, with the establishment of Article 39 of the 1997 Constitution. The censorship of press, radio, and television, which had been widely practiced during the authoritarian regime, is now prohibited. There exists a new media committee, set up as an independent political organization, outside the government's influence to look after the media and allocate frequencies.1 The rights of the reporters to freely express their views without intervention are now guaranteed by the new constitution. 2. Speed: Different braches of the media employ various types of technology in order to compete with each other, this is especially true when media becomes one of the large profitable businesses. Speed becomes a major benchmark in competition. Speedy reports are made possible by various new technologies such as facsimile, phone-in reports, satellite communication, as well as updated news on the newspaper web sites. 3. Interactive Technology: New technology not only increases the speed of information transmission, it also creates real-time communication between the information receiver and the information disseminator. This interactive technology can increase a sense of "imagined community"2, that stretches beyond the ability to share information, into the ability to exchange opinions in real time. 1 The law is currently being developed in the legislature. 2 See Anderson (1992) for detail. 4 Five types of Political Media in Contemporary Thailand: The three movements are articulating in the various types of media as presented below. In sum, newspapers, civic radio and television news seems to be continuing an increasing role of media in Thai politics as a channel of political participation. However, there are also internal developments within these media that will be discussed in detail. The most recent political media to develop are polls and IMBs. 1) Newspapers: After the 1992 uprising and until the economic crisis in the second half of the 1990s, magazines and newspapers (especially the political and business newspapers) flourished. Substantial parts of the Thai daily and weekly business newspapers and weekly political magazines survived the economic crisis.3 Their survival was largely made possible by the restructuring of the press industry. Most, if not all, of the survivors are no longer operated by small independent presses, rather they are operated by the multimedia businesses in the stock market. Although the sources of income for the press comes from both advertisement and the retail price, in the last ten years there has been more than a 50% increase in the retail price. Retail price increases of up to 50% have forced the various media to become very competitive; and made media survival more challenging. There are three major developments in the newspaper sector since the events of 1992 and the economic crisis: a) the diversification of media business, b) the rise and continuation of the "public intellectual" in press, and c) the rise of the "online" newspaper. a) Media Business: Newspapers became part of products in the mega media business, that includes, for example, news radio, television news, print press, as well as the clipping business. The expansion of media businesses requires new forms of management that sometimes creates tension between management teams and the reporters. However, the new constitution and the new 3 The major political and business newspapers and magazines are the Manager, Krugthepturakit, Matichon Weekly, Nation Weekly, Siamrath Weekly, and Prachachart Turakit Weekly. 5 Media Act (a result of the 1992 uprising) protect reporters from being laid off without proper reason.4 b) Public Intellectual: One of popular aspects of the Manager newspaper during the 1992 uprising was that they invited many university professors to write their own columns in the newspaper. This phenomenon opened up communication between the intellectual and the public in new ways and it became popular as a pattern for the current business newspapers and political magazines. It provides more in-depth analysis (mostly anti-state) to the news and current situation, and a link to progressive politics, or "people's politics" (that is advocating for the poor and the rural who are under-represented in the media).5 The columns also provide the intellectual more control over their own perspectives, avoiding arbitrary editing that occurs with interview columns. The columns also become a new source of income of the intellectual.6 c) Online Version: Speed and interactive technology are the new trends in the media business. All major newspapers are providing a free online version of the paper, as part of a new channel for advertisement.7 However, some newspaper and magazine do not publish a full version on line. Unlike the print version of the newspapers, online versions include updated headline news every hour, and poll/opinion/discussion sections. 2) Civic radios: There has been an increase in the number of "civic radio" stations. Civic radio stations played an important role in providing a space for discussion of and resistance to the 4 We should not ignore the fact these rights and privileges only came into being as a result of the long struggle between journalists and the authoritarian state. 5 The most popular columnists are Nithi Aewsriwong, Kasian Tejepira, and Giles Ji Ungpakorn, among others. Nithi is a professor in History currently retired from Chieng Mai University.
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