Communication Technology and Political Changes

Abstract

This article was to study 1) forms, processes, and dynamic of  mass communications via communication technologies during 1992-2011; Black May period (1991-1992), ‘Thaksin Era’ (2001-2006) and ‘After coup d’etat’ period (2007-2011), 2) relationship between communication strategies of People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) and political changes over the time and (3) relationship between communication strategies of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) and political changes over the time.

According to this study found that  the use of media and mass communication via modern communication technology in 3 periods of major political events didn’t directly lead to political changes but they had impact on information communication, diffusion of their own political ideology, mass mobilization, political persuasion and participation especially in cases of PAD and UDD. For the case of Black May in 1992, some findings support earlier researches concerning the communication technology’s roles in political mass protests. Mobile phones had not only been the indicator of protesters ‘middle class’ status but also been the important channels to communicate between protesters and outside world and as the tools for journalists to report real-time situations at the protesting place. Secondly the Integrated Media Communications (IMC) were the forms which both PAD and UDD applied to organize and manage their mass protests. These contributed to effective communications and created the dynamic of communications as well as expanded the scope of communications to cover all groups of audiences directly in physical places and online world. IMC techniques also helped PAD and UDD create mixed forms of communications both in one-way and two-ways communications. For the audiences, they were changed from the passive audiences to active seekers and sometimes many audiences had also been the active senders. Finally, this study found that ‘people’ were the important channels in the interpersonal and group communications processes, both formal and informal, especially in the case of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship.