The Representation of the New Generation of Thai Pro-Democracy Activists in Online English-Language News Articles

Abstract

The current study concerns the new wave of pro-democracy activism in Thailand as an international political phenomenon in online news discourse. The investigation employs a critical discourse analysis approach to examine discourse strategies adopted to construct the representation of Thai pro-democracy activists and decode the underlying ideology hidden in the news articles reporting this controversial movement. Thirty English-language news articles reporting on the same incidents and published between October 2020 and March 2022 were downloaded from the Bangkok Post and Reuters websites and analyzed using the Ideological Square framework (van Dijk, 2000, 2006, 2011, 2013). Scrutiny was given to the use of lexicon, granularity, local coherence, superstructures, and syntactic structures as discourse features. The findings indicate that discourse strategies are ideologically used on the Bangkok Post website to construct a negative other-presentation of Thai pro-democracy activists. Such strategies are deliberately adopted on the Reuters website to fabricate a positive self-presentation of the activists. The study contributes to knowledge of how language is used to generate narratives and shape audience perceptions by shedding light on the ideological implications hidden in the discourse strategies employed by news sources. © 2023 Language Institute, Thammasat University. All rights reserved.