The whole of Thailand is in a festive mood now. Colorful banners are everywhere in streets of Bangkok giving a sense of decency and harmony. Posters from the leading parties, the Democrat Party (Phak Prachatipat) led by Abhisit Vejjajiva, and the Pheu Thai Party (PTP) led by Yingluck Shinawatra, seemingly line every street, competing for space to influence voters. Just as important is the jockeying for position in the virtual world. Abihisit and Yingluck both have Facebook and Twitter accounts with thousands of Likes and comments.
Social media is an important political campaign tool now used all around the world, look no further to Barak Obama’s successful run for the U.S. presidency, which featured heavy use of social media to reach voters. The recent influence of social media in Singapore’s election got the attention of Thai politicians as well.
The democrats are using social media as a key tool for interactive communication. They’ve appointed their young social media staff to design and deploy their online strategy. They developed a democrat app for the iPhone, enabling supporters to follow the party’s activities and policies, including live tweets. It also provides picture badges to help the party faithful in identifying party-list candidates. Thus are encouraging both first-time voters and the politics-weary middle class to exercise their political rights.
New media, i.e., internet, blogs, and web-based news providers have changed the politics of sharing information and working together for social change in South East Asia. Facebook and Twitter have revolutionized the way that political parties and figures communicate publicly and directly to their followers. Governments, corporate news media and journalists are not the only gate keepers of information and news anymore. New media has supported the process of democratization around the South East Asia region through sharing information and views.
An estimated 9 million people use Facebook in Thailand, and more than 400,000 maintaining. Yet only a small fraction of Thailand’s 20 million internet users could be connected through social media, but the impoverished north-east region Isaan is the home to 21 million of the country’s 65 million people (it holds 127 of the 375 constituencies to be contested) are out of this technical scope. Therefore communicating with the country at large through social media is not yet a greater priority compared to traditional media. However, a recent study reports that mobile internet access has tripled in Thailand since last year, with more than a third of fixed-line internet users now using mobile. Most of these mobile internet users are affluent young people, a sign that the politicians must take into account.
In recent times social media has become the driving force behind youth-based social movements in South East Asia and has become an essential communications platform. However, just how much social media will influence current Thai politics in this weekend’s upcoming election remains to be seen.
As a 10 year expat liivng in Thailand I am amazed that the Thai government is not curbing new mobile wifi areas.
Between me and my husband we’ve owned more MP3 players over the years than I can count, including Sansas, iRivers, iPods (classic & touch), the Ibiza Rhapsody, etc. But, the last few years I’ve settled down to one line of players. Why? Because I was happy to discover how well-designed and fun to use the underappreciated (and widely mocked) Zunes are.