Table 2 - uploaded by Kittisak Jermsittiparsert
Content may be subject to copyright.
Source publication
Amidst the immense hardship to achieve a consensus on the definition of democracy, having allowed political rivalries of Thailand in the past decade to proclaim themselves as democratic, albeit with different emphases, the participation of personnel and students of various universities in such conflicts has led to branding of their respective insti...
Citations
... Student activism was crucial in every successful pro-democracy movement in Thailand including the constitutional change in 1932 and the overthrows of military rule 1973 and 1992, but it is also constantly highlighted as part of the trauma from the government massacre of students at Thammasat University campus in Bangkok in 1976 (Kongkirati 2012;Ungpakorn 2006). In addition, student groups were active in protests both by the 'red shirts' (emphasizing majority-style democracy) and the 'yellow shirts' (preserving a role for the monarch in the political order) during repeated mass demonstrations 2005-2014 (Hewison 2014;Jermsittiparsert and Kitipatmontree 2017). It is worth emphasizing, though, that although these previous examples of student mobilization provide a backdrop to the events our study covers in 2020, the latter campaign was neither organized nor to a large extent composed of veteran activists. ...
Research on the formation of transnational social movements primarily view these as either exile support of a local movement or mobilization around an international issue. This article presents a different argument for transnational activism drawing on the logic of the repression-dissent nexus, when considering the combination of online and offline performances of contemporary social movements. The starting point is that membership in online communities constitute a social identity for potential protest participants that can be activated and politicized when states' seek to repress access and content to online interaction. Since online communities are borderless by nature, we suggest that when regimes employ online repression due to local protests then we will see a backlash that will facilitate the formation of a transnational social movement. We illustrate our argument with an empirical discussion about how the anti-government protests in Thailand in 2020 became part of and facilitated a growing transnational social movement of youth discontent with regimes in Southeast and East Asia. The example show that the impetus for increasing transnational cooperation throughout the process was in response to growing repression by the Thai authorities both of online content and on the street.
One of the effects of the 2006 coup d'état were the uprising of the Red-Shirts and political conflicts, showing through the polarised politics in Thailand. Also, the Red-Shirts were considered to be the main political supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra. The study therefore aimed at investigating the factors leading to being the Red-Shirts and the relations between Thaksin Shinawatra’s policies and the Red-shirt movement, focusing on the case study of the 3 Red-Shirts’ villages in Mahasarakham province. The methodology of the study included mixed methods between using 310 questionnaires for the quantitative method and in-depth interviews of the 25 Red-Shirts for the qualitative method. The data gained was then analysed by SPSS program and cognitive mapping respectively. The study showed that the factors leading to being the Red-Shirts were Thaksin Shinawatra’s policies, the 2006 coup d'état and the popularity of Thaksin. It was moreover found that Thaksin Shinawatra’s policies could literally improve the Red-Shirts’ quality of life. The policies supporting the claim were the 30 Baht Health Care Scheme and the Farmers’ Debt Repayment Policy. Moreover, Red-shirts have no relationship with sex, age, marital status, education level, career and income of the sample. This is different from the previous study, which aimed to identify whether red-shirts had a factor in their income, occupation and education level.
