Day 1 (4th Jan)

The day started off early with a tiring 3 hours journey to Mae Fah Luang University, Chiang Rai. It was well worth the journey though because we were greeted with a lovely sight as we pulled into the campus. This is the campus that has been voted the most beautiful university in Thailand! What a great opportunity it was that we get to come here to start off our research work.

The main agenda for the day was an interview with a local professor from Thailand, Professor Chirada, a political science professor. But first up on the menu was lunch! We were told that lunch will be in a form of a lunchbox, so the impression that I got was that of typical economical rice pack we get in Singapore. Then came the first ‘cultural shock’ when our lunchbox actually consisted of bread, eggs and muffins. “Do you even consider this a proper lunch’ was probably my first thought. On hindsight though, they probably had their reasons and considerations, such as the taste preference of non-locals and also the need to keep the food for long hours without causing the entire bus to smell. I once again remind myself that I should try to be non-judgemental.

The main event soon went underway. Professor Chirada first left the field open for us to address some of our research questions. This is when we immediately encountered some problems in our research question. Our research aimed to investigate the possible use of social media by Thai youths to express their views on social/political issues in Thailand. Yet, according the Professor Chirada, the use of social media in spearheading any political scene changes in Thailand is very limited due to a very strong stance of information control by the government, ultimately leading to a culture of self-censorship among youths.

Another unexpected hurdle to carrying out our research was the culture of Thai youths being very concerned about their image. According to Prof Chirada again, Thai youths might not share their opinions, especially if it is a minority opinion, as it would make them unpopular. This result in a culture of conformity among Thai youths.
After the short Q&A session, Prof Chirada proceeded with a short lecture about human security, offering some insights into the relation between the security and freedom of speech, and how the military government have curb freedom of speech to ensure security, and this is an idea that Thai people seemed to welcome. She also suggested that to effectively carry out this research, we might want to consider a comparison.

With so much new information to work with, compounded with the fact that the answers we are getting are not exactly within expectations, it became natural that my group was a little disoriented and disappointed. After dinner, we met up to discuss about the new information we got, and decided that we will need to adopt a different angle. Instead of focusing on the potential of social media to spearhead any changes, we should focus on the reasons that are preventing Thai youths from using social media to express themselves and establish an identity, while comparing this culture to that in Singapore.

On hindsight, such disappointments could have been avoided if we had done more background research on Thailand’s political scene. However, it is also possible that no amount of background research can compare to research from actual fieldwork, and I am glad that we had a chance to face this difficulty and learn to overcome it as a group.