MEDIA AND POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN THAILAND AND CAMBODIA

Political communication refer to all forms of communication undertaken by politicians and other political actors for the purpose of achieving specific objective, which include communication address to those actors by non-politician such as voters and newspaper columnist as well as about their activities (Raymin. M, 2014). In Thailand, politicians have used political campaign communication strategies to gain their vote at all level, and mass media is a very popular tool in campaign. The communication tool throw media is very important to use between representative and voters. One more special political communication between representative and voters by using media tool are poster and leaflet (Anekjumnongporn.T, n.d).


Thai foreign policy based on anticommunism and special relationship with the United State of America. Thailand was a charter member of Association of South East Asia Nation (ASEAN) and supported CLMV country to be the member of organization between 1995 and 1998. Thailand has played very important role in creating ASEAN communities. Thailand open their economy and trade with ASEAN member states and other countries such as Japan, the United States, China, Singapore, and Malaysia and EU (Jame A.H, 2015).


For Cambodia, the foreign policy of Cambodia are interesting. Cambodia focus diplomatic relation with all ASEAN countries and strengthened the existing diplomatic with major powers in the region, such as China and Japan. Cambodia upgraded its diplomatic relations with China and Japan to the level of strategic partnership in 2010 and 2013, respectively, and Cambodia also focus on Asia Pacific countries relation in order to build economic growth. To be long term development, Cambodia need to be balance economic, military and political interests among its immediate neighbors, China, the U.S., and ASEAN ( Sarith.H, 2014)


Analysis


One indicator that determine political communication is media. In this part will analyst the media in Thailand and Cambodia that based on some criteria such as the independence from government, the representative of media to difference opinion and access to difference society, the effective and investigation of media over government and political parties, and the freedom of journalist.


Media is play very important role in Thailand and Cambodia. In Thailand, politician interest group and activist use media especially, social media such as Facebook, twitter, Instagram, and youtube to promote to gain their interest throw campaign and to be plate form to express their opinion and idea. The revolution of media from the beginning of 1990s until nowadays, we can see that media is not fully independence. During 1990s, Thailand was under military control so media and broadcasting was a tool and under control by state, after the control of military media in Thailand was a bit free but TV and radio still under control of elite. Everything change in nowadays because people can use media and social media freely, but current political conflict in 2014 the media in Thailand is not free. (Rober.T, 2015).


New immerging of social media in increasing technology, people in Thailand demand their freedom on using media and social media. The anti-government group and large group of people created blog, facebook and twitter to share information and demand their voice. Currently, the freedom and democracy of Thailand is acceptable for their own people. We can see that some politician us social media to increase their vote from citizens. Yingluck Shinawatra, Abhisit Vejjajiva and Suthep Thaugsuban all have Facebook accounts that have received more than two million likes. (Rober.T, 2015).


In Cambodia, in term of media such as TV and radian are less participated in democracy system. In election campaign, there was only a few TV and Radio that under government tried to promote awareness to government. In national election 2013 was the new era for Cambodians to use social media, especially Facebook. According to SEA Media Guide(2014) shown that among 14 million people there are 2.7 million people have internet using and 1 200 00 people using facebook. The number of people using facbook in Cambodia is uncontrollable because the way the get information is from anonymous source which meant that the information is bias. Either government or opposition site can make untruth information to facebook user because in term of political knowledge Cambodian is very law if we compare to other nation such as Thailand. According to United State ambassador todd in Phnom Penh said that:


“Information is crucial for a democracy. Voters can’t make informed decisions without knowledge of the parties’ platforms and important political issues. Unfortunately, during the campaign period, balanced and relevant information was hard to come by, with most Cambodian media outlets representing only the narrow political interests of their owners. This made getting reliable information extremely difficult.”


The link between media and democracy in Cambodia is limited by the way that people express their opinion. It is too free that the government doesn’t have any law to control. However, currently, there is an debate between government and civil society on drafting cyber law. It meant that the way that people use social media will be controlled by that law.





To compare between Cambodia and Thailand, we can see that media in democracy in Cambodia is free than Thailand because people can express their opinion and critics politicians and demand what they want. However, Cambodia should have rule or law to control facebook users. Sometime, too much democracy is not good.