Community-Based Media in Promoting Identity and Culture: A Case Study in Eastern Thailand

PISAPAT YOUKONGPUN
Griffith University, Australia

Abstract
This paper analyses the role of community-based media in information distribution in the Riverside community, a cultural tourism destination in Chanthaburi, Eastern Thailand. It has started to produce its own media, and to use social networks to promote itself to the nation. Exploring the role of community media produced by locals will reinforce the idea that community media have provided much more effective communication channels for local people in a community environment. By using ethnographic action research as a methodology, this research gains strength through a rich understanding of the community by following an ongoing research cycle of planning, doing, observing and reflecting. Moreover, this study reflects the idea of ‘hyperlocal’ media. With approximately one hundred households on which to focus, it is much easier for ‘hyperlocal’ to reach local people by providing local news, covering local politics and engaging people in the affairs relevant to their area.

Keywords: community-based media, hyperlocal, Thailand, the public sphere

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Pisapat Youkongpun is currently a doctor of philosophy candidate at Griffith University, Australia. Her areas of research interest are community media, minority media, media in Southeast Asia, and hyperlocal.