Research Results
12. Facebook has changed your behavior to be more aggressive than mainstream media has
changing people’s behavior to be more aggressive
12. Facebook has changed your behavior to be more aggressive than mainstream media has.
Amount Percentage
Strongly disagree 40 2.7
Disagree 80 5.4
Moderately disagree 195 13.2
Undecided 358 24.3
Moderately agree 335 22.7
Agree 291 19.8
Strongly agree 174 11.8
Total 1473 100.0
Undisclosed 27
Total 1500
Table 40: The possibility that social media (Facebook) will replace the traditional one 13.Political movement on social network namely
Facebook is likely to replace the traditional one.
Amount Percentage
Strongly disagree 42 2.9
Disagree 65 4.4
Moderately disagree 124 8.4
Undecided 426 28.9
Moderately agree 427 29.0
Agree 277 18.8
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encourages Thai people to participate political movement rather than mainstream media.
This means that Facebook is the main stream media and plays an important role in political movement, so Thai people are always involved in political movements in both online and offline political activities. According to the result, nearly 60 percent of our respondents believed that political turmoil brings about political movements and divides people based on their belief on democracy ideology.
Therefore, Facebook acts as a connector, amplifier and accelerator helping people to join political activities.
Moreover, people can be both receiver and sender at the same time;
therefore Facebook has changed their behaviors as well. People can access the Internet, update news and redistribute Facebook posts. Political topics are quite sensitive to be discussed publicly. Facebook is used for attacking political opponents through hate speech and comic mock. People can also express their feelings by posting them on YouTube and Facebook as to express their political ideology.
In short, Facebook helps Thai people to receive and distribute their own political ideology. Since Facebook is a two-ways communication tool, it encourages Thai people to get involve in political movements. According to the Asia Foundation survey report (2013), the PDRC respondents were more likely to attend rallies alone when compare to red-shirt counterparts (20 percent versus 9 percent). On the other hand, red-shirt respondents were significantly more likely to attend as part of a larger organized group when compare to the PDRC members (36 percent versus percent). The majority of respondents in both groups (54 percent of the red shirts and 64 percent of the PDRC) attended rallies in the company of smaller groups of friends (as distinct from larger organized groups).
As mentioned earlier, Facebook is a connector which helps to gather people. The Asia Foundation result shows that both the red-shirts and the PDRC attend rallies with their friends. Therefore, Facebook undoubtedly can pull individuals into collective activities and change traditional political movement. As people’s behaviors have been changed in political movement, the traditional movement will be replaced. However, it does not mean traditional one will be no longer required.
Indeed, Facebook linked people both in online and offline society.
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Political power cannot be changed without real action, but the number of the people matters in changing political power. Facebook is the best tool for mobilizing people to make a real political action on public space. However, Facebook and other social media are the tool that sustains political aspect and divides people according to their political ideology. In this case, they divided people into traditional democracy (conservative) and modern democracy (liberal).
According to in-depth interviews with scholars, university students and political leaders, 58.9 percent of respondents agreed that they were interested in political participation, and most of them preferred participating in online society rather than in public as they felt uncomfortable and more secured to discuss or talk politics in public space, especially with strangers. When the research team approached to ask questions about Thai political and political movement, they were reluctant to answer.
In addition, when we asked the same question with scholars, we were not surprised that all of them had their own political ideology. They were willing to discuss and share their political views. Some of them clearly expressed themselves as the red shirts. They said that they wanted to protect legitimacy of the government because this government (the Yingluck government) came from election unlike the Abhisit government. At the same time, some of them openly expressed themselves as the yellow shirts and the PDRC members.
Some respondents went to join both yellow-shirt rallies and the PDRC campaign of “Shutdown Bangkok”. University student were more comfortable to reply when they were asked about political issues. Most of them had different ideas about politics which some of them were from the red camp, and some of them were from the yellow or the PDRC camps. However, most of them had some symbols for representing their political aspects. Some of them had the nation flag, some of them wore red clothes, and some of them had a yellow-colored symbol.
Forty-seven percent of respondents did not discuss politics with their friends or their family because they want to avoid discussing sensitive issues. They told us that because our society has already in a heating political conflict, it would be better to skip the talk and discussion on the particular issues with their closer friends and their family. They did not want to lose their friends because of politics issues and
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do not want to argue especially with their parents, their brothers, sisters and even their relatives.
However, some local political leaders argued that it was easy to discuss political matters among the family members who had the same political ideology rather than those who had different political opinions. University students also tried to avoid politics talk as well. They tried to avoid discussing political issues in their family; instead, they had the discussion with friends on Facebook.
When we asked the respondents whether they preferred discussing political issues with other people in person or through social media, we received a surprise answer. Almost forty percent of respondents preferred to discuss face to face rather than through social media. Their reasons were quite interesting. They explained that when people wanted to talk and discuss sensitive issues like politics, they wanted to see interlocutor faces. Meeting in person was needed as to make sure that the opinions were real and came from interlocutor rather than social media. Moreover, talking in person allowed them to emphasize subject and discuss more comfortable.
In contrast, 76.9 percent of respondents did not like to participate in political movement, and 52.4 percent of respondents did not subscribe political Facebook pages, blogs or websites. Also, 67.3 percent of respondents had never attended political meetings.
This means that, when we asked them about their participation in political movement and attendance in political meetings, they denied joining. When it came to the real action most of people was not willing to participate because of safety reasons, and some of political activities were far from their hometowns. Moreover, they were also afraid violence might take place during the protest. They did not subscribe political pages because many people posted and shared some comments, pictures and clip already.
On the other hand, the leaders of both camps gave different answers.
They also would like to participate in political movement and attended to political meetings. In this case, we assumed that because of they were a leader, they had more sympathy than individual respondents. Also, as a local leader, they needed information from head quarter or command center, so they can attend political
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their own camp. However, they did not subscribe opposition.5. Cross tabulation between demographics and political participation