Written by an established expert on Thailand, this is one of the first books to fully investigate the Thai media’s role during the Thaksin government’s first term. Incorporating political economy and media theory, the book provides a unique insight into globalization in Southeast Asia, analyzing the role of communications and media in regional cultural politics. Examining the period from the mid 1990s, Lewis makes a sustained comparison between Thailand and its neighbouring countries in relation to the media, business, politics and popular culture. Covering issues including business development, tourism, the Thai movie industry and the war on terror, the book argues that globalization as it relates to media, can be patterned on Thai experiences.

This book examines how media have brought about or paced dramatic political events in Southeast Asia over the last two decades. It highlights a situation where media dynamics are no longer a simple formula of state control versus media resistance. The state can propel its own media-liberalizing programme; civil society can be an enemy of press freedom; market forces and cultural mindsets are sometimes more potent agents of change than state-appointed media custodians. Practitioners, scholars and activists have come together in this volume to provide a diversity of narratives on subjects as varied as powerful politicians and marginalized transsexuals.

. . . the book is in a comprehensive, readable format. . . the book is logically organised, rich in data and statistics regarding the issues that it covers, as well as accessibly written such that its points would not be lost on the average upper-level undergraduate student with some preparation in Asian studies and the social sciences. Jane M. Ferguson, South East Asia Research . . . a serious academic work that should be on the official reading list of every media studies course. Chris Roberts, Presenter, Sky News Jonathan Woodier has written an excellent book on the politics of media control in Southeast Asia. He shows how political elites in the region are using major events such as the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis and the 2001 September 11 terror attacks as well as innovations in media tools such as public relations and the internet to control information flow to their citizens. This book is a must read for anyone interested in an explanation why Southeast Asian models of authoritarian models are surviving. A brilliant analysis, it combines media theory with a critical discussion of contemporary developments in Asia. James Gomez, Keio University, Japan True to the old Chinese adage kill a chicken scare a monkey , the few who once challenged Southeast Asia s ruling elites disappeared and the majority were silent. Crude, but effective. Modern times, however, demand a more sophisticated approach. Ruling elites now strip cultures naked and micro manage people s minds. Their preferred tools of penetration and manipulation are a compliant media and a money hungry PR industry. Jonathan Woodier s insights will ensure that you will never read a newspaper or watch TV news in quite the same way again. Trevor Watson, Professional Public Relations Pty Ltd, Australia This is an engaging and informative analysis of the media landscape in South East Asia. It uncovers the pervasive impact of the global media on the political process, and raises important academic and policy issues in the process. This book is timely, and will be a must read for policymakers, academics and students across communications, media studies, politics and democratization, as well as for everyone with an interest in current day developments in South East Asia. Joep Cornelissen, Leeds University Business School, UK Jonathan Woodier s latest work considers what impact the media has upon the democratization process in Southeast Asia. Has the media had a liberalizing effect or become subject to elite control in Southeast Asia and, if so, why? What role does the global media play in this process, particularly given its conglomerization and commoditization? By examining the communications media and its relationship to political change in Southeast Asia, this fascinating study will endeavour to provide both a regional comparative analysis and a more balanced interpretation of the mass communication media in the wake of September 11, 2001. The book also investigates the durability of authoritarian regimes and the enduring capacity of the media-controlled state alongside the growing sophistication of political communications particularly the use of PR consultants. The author provides an insider s view with unique insights into the practice of political communication and its development throughout the strategically important region of Southeast Asia with its large Moslem states as well as much further afield to countries such as China and post-industrial Europe. As such the book will be warmly welcomed by academics of politics, international relations, media, communications and PR. It will also appeal to researchers interested in political change, the rise of the global media giants and the influence of authoritarian states such as China.

Opposing Democracy in the Digital Age is about why ordinary people in a democratizing state oppose democracy and how they leverage both traditional and social media to do so. Aim Sinpeng focuses on the people behind popular, large-scale antidemocratic movements that helped bring down democracy in 2006 and 2014 in Thailand. The yellow shirts (PAD—People’s Alliance for Democracy) that are the focus of the book are antidemocratic movements grown out of democratic periods in Thailand, but became the catalyst for the country’s democratic breakdown. Why, when, and how supporters of these movements mobilize offline and online to bring down democracy are some of the key questions that Sinpeng answers. While the book primarily uses a qualitative methodological approach, it also uses several quantitative tools to analyze social media data in the later chapters. This is one of few studies in the field of regime transition that focuses on antidemocratic mobilization and takes the role of social media seriously.

This book analyzes the relationship between political power and the media in a range of nation states in East and Southeast Asia, focusing in particular on the place of the media in authoritarian and post-authoritarian regimes. It discusses the centrality of media in sustaining repressive regimes, and the key role of the media in the transformation and collapse of such regimes. It questions in particular the widely held beliefs, that the state can have complete control over the media consumption of its citizens, that commercialization of the media necessarily leads to democratization, and that the transnational, liberal dimensions of western media are crucial for democratic movements in Asia. Countries covered include Burma, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Myanmar Media in Transition: Legacies, Challenges and Change is the first volume to overview the country’s contemporary media landscape, providing a critical assessment of the sector during the complex and controversial political transition. Moving beyond the focus on journalism and freedom of the press that characterizes many media-focused volumes, Myanmar Media in Transition also explores developments in fiction, filmmaking, social movement media and social media. Documenting changes from both academic and practitioner perspectives, the twenty-one chapters reinforce the volume’s theoretical arguments by providing on-the-ground, factual and experiential data intended to open useful dialogue between key stakeholders in the media, government and civil society sectors. Providing an overview of media studies in the country, Myanmar Media in Transition addresses current challenges, such as the use of social media in spreading hate speech and the shifting boundaries of free expression, by placing them within Myanmar’s broader historic social, political and economic context.

"An important element in the Thai success story during the boom years of the late 1980s and early 1990s was the flourishing and politically interventionist print media. Politics and the Press in Thailand is the first book in English to examine the tangled web of relationships linking newspaper owners, editors, columnists and reporters, with leading politicians and power-holders." "Duncan McCargo was granted access to the editorial meetings and newsrooms of Thailand's leading newspapers. Drawing on numerous interviews and extensive observation, this book unpacks the contradictions and dichotomies that underlie political coverage in the Thai language press."--BOOK JACKET

When a populist movement elected Thaksin Shinawatra as prime minister of Thailand in 2001, many of the country’s urban elite dismissed the outcome as just another symptom of rural corruption, a traditional patronage system dominated by local strongmen pressuring their neighbors through political bullying and vote-buying. In Thailand’s Political Peasants, however, Andrew Walker argues that the emergence of an entirely new socioeconomic dynamic has dramatically changed the relations of Thai peasants with the state, making them a political force to be reckoned with. Whereas their ancestors focused on subsistence, this generation of middle-income peasants seeks productive relationships with sources of state power, produces cash crops, and derives additional income through non-agricultural work. In the increasingly decentralized, disaggregated country, rural villagers and farmers have themselves become entrepreneurs and agents of the state at the local level, while the state has changed from an extractor of taxes to a supplier of subsidies and a patron of development projects. Thailand’s Political Peasants provides an original, provocative analysis that encourages an ethnographic rethinking of rural politics in rapidly developing countries. Drawing on six years of fieldwork in Ban Tiam, a rural village in northern Thailand, Walker shows how analyses of peasant politics that focus primarily on rebellion, resistance, and evasion are becoming less useful for understanding emergent forms of political society.