ABSTRACT
One of the ironies of the use of the media in Southeast Asia is that they have often been a source of profits and a powerful influence over public opinion for the ruling elites. A technology that is capable of facilitating twoway public communication has regularly been employed instead for state propaganda. In Thailand’s virtual form of democracy, for instance, the clearest example of this is that Thaksin Shinawatra’s most lucrative business was his mobile phone company AIS, which enables Thais to talk freely with each other. And yet Thaksin’s media policies since 2001 have mostly been aimed at blocking two-way communication and promoting his own image
and TRT (Thai Rak Thai) policies in a unidirectional way. In the February 2005 election, for example, he refused to debate with the opposition publicly, while the state media consistently privileged news about TRT.
