'Thainess' and bridal perfection in Thai wedding magazines

The object of this thesis is to explore the representation of ‘ Thainess ’ in Thai wedding magazines. The thesis adopts semiotic and multimodal analysis as methods to examine how cover pages, photographs, editorial contents and advertisement s in the magazines communicate their denotative and connotative meanings through primary markers and modality markers such as pose, objects, setting, framing, lights, shadow and colour tone. Subsequently , each image is examined through its depiction of people in the image to determine any st ereotypical cultural attributes that highlight a distinction between the traditionalised Thai and modernised Thai bride. This thesis argues that the legacy of Thailand ’ s semi colonial history constructs an ambivalent relationship with the West and Thailand ’ s self - orientalising tendency, as well as the diffusion of hybrid cultures and modern Thai beauty ideals. Self - orientalising tendencies and the desire to encapsulate ‘ Thainess ’ are thusly observed in the magazines ’ representation of traditional ‘ Thainess ’ with a nostalgic overtone, by linking the ideals of traditional beauty to the imagined qualities of heroines in Thai classic literature and aristocratic ladies from pre-modern Siam through fashion and traditional beautifying remedies

Towards social transformation in Thailand: Orwellian power struggles and ‘digital’ human rights under the socio-technical Thai Internet panopticon

In Thailand, a military elite has repressed activity on the World Wide Web (Web) through ‘emergency’ surveillance acts following a coup d’état in May 2014. Since then, harsher punishments than have been imposed previously, less personal freedoms and even vaguer legislation, restrict ‘digital’ human rights. This fuels a ‘surveillance culture’ echoing George Orwell, whose novel 1984 describes a society driven by paranoia, peer-observation and self-censorship. In South-East (SE) Asia, repression of freedoms is not new. However, Thailand is, supposedly, a democratic country, where freedom of expression is enshrined in law. This shapes a worrying ‘digital’ future for Thai citizens where, since 2019, a newly ‘legitimate’ and military-backed government seeks to realise a socio-technical Thai Internet Panopticon. In this chapter, we consider why this is problematic

Web Science in SE Asia: cultivating a 'Thai digital Renaissance' through (re)introducing an interdisciplinary science in Higher Education

Inseparable from the communication of knowledge through the World Wide Web, the study of online social interaction and communication in South East (SE) Asia is growing. The teaching of digital media literacy raises challenging debates for those in Higher Education (HE), especially in a burgeoning digital economy such as Thailand. The advances in technology, growth in mobile connectivity and social media have proliferated online political, social and personal movements, as well as providing a convenient alternative for offline communication. Thailand is emerging into a digital renaissance, but its education system is still lacking pedagogy to support learning for young digital natives. The Thailand 4.0 initiative, a government reform, seeks just that; it challenges Thai HE to innovate teaching a digitally empowered, connected body of students who are now interconnected global actors, shaping complex heterogeneous networks as influencers, users, contributors and critics. The increase in not only their power, but knowledge of how to use the Web, an asset to extend their cultural identity and social capital, raises critical questions about such a burgeoning ‘Thai digital renaissance'. Undoubtedly, we need new ways to equip students as critical learners who can reflect on the inescapable interdisciplinary practice of complicated topics in their study, which includes issues like fake news, revenge pornography, social media journalism and even domestic law in SE Asia, which impact censorship and digital rights. Problematically, these are not simply social or technical phenomena; they are interwoven, which for students new to thinking critically is hard to comprehend. Yet, an emerging discipline, Web Science, offers an interdisciplinary approach to solve this, one changing the view that studying the Web is technical, so understood through knowing how to make lines of code. In this paper, we conceptually integrate two core knowledge components that are intrinsic to Web Science, that of interdisciplinarity and sociotechnical heterogeneity, with current issues surrounding public opinion in Thailand, to offer a reintroduction, for a new audience of researchers, to a discipline we playfully conclude as #webscithai. So, a call to the academic community of Thailand to embrace a sociotechnical pedagogy useful for educating and empowering students in Thailand as global digital citizens

Newton’s socio-technical cradle? Web science, the weaponisation of social media, hashtag activism and Thailand's postcolonial pendulum

Throughout 2020 and into 2021, set against a global pandemic, Thai emancipatory activism unfolded. This paper offers a postmodernist theoretical discourse about such activism, built around the emergent discipline of Web Science. Drawing on a review of surveillance culture insights from Michel Foucault, Manuel Castells, Bruno Latour, Hans Kelsen and David Hume, and textual analysis insights from media studies, we frame acts of internalised colonisation by a powerful government. We suggest these are contested by ‘emergent postcolonialism’ via hashtag activism. As a basis for future research, we offer the theoretical model of a socio-technical political pendulum. Across it, digitally native Thais challenge internal colonialism, through counter-power drawn from the Internet as a postcolonial structure. In doing so, they propel or attract other actors. This momentum creates an emergent emancipatory society where many are still caught in the middle of shifting opinion, which is problematic to mediation. We conclude that Web Science offers a basis for educational reform in Thailand

'Reinventing' Thai universities: Ajarn, Thailand 4.0 and cross-cultural communication implications for international academia

Thai higher education (Thai HE) is changing. Thailand 4.0, a socioeconomic and educational development policy of the Thai Government, wants universities to ‘reinvent’ themselves into the world’s top - 100 and so draw closer to international ideas of quality assurance, research, impact and teaching. This has, for example, led to a radical proposed revolution in mid - 2020 for Thailand’s academic ranking system, one that is both unexpected and unprepared for. Therefore, using a literature review, alongside policy analysis, we describe publicly available information on Thai academic systems and question the forthcoming proposed changes against the pre-existing systems for academic progression. Through this, we debate the academic expectations and traditions in Thai HE. These are unique, a reflection of a country that prides itself as never having been colonised, yet favouring the borrowing, rejecting and reinterpretation of other academic systems. We propose consideration ofthe cross - cultural communication implications for Thai HE is needed, as it seeks to move towards an international setting. Then, we conclude that critical restructuring of academic ranks would create a more progressive educational policy, in line with international ideas of academia. Meanwhile, it raises further implications for cross - cultural collaboration, as well as communication, which has the potential for a lucrative knowledge exchange between institutes of learning in western higher education and Thailand