Social Media and Thailand’s Struggle over Public Space

Abstract

This paper looks into social media as a public sphere, where people individually or collectively express, discuss, share and deliberate on information, ideas, views and opinions. The concept of the public sphere as advanced by the German intellectual Jürgen Habermas refers to a utopia in which people can address public issues without the interference of state or capital. In his own words, Habermas said, “Les hommes, private gentlemen or die Privatleute made up the public not just in the sense that power and prestige of public office were held in suspense; economic dependencies also in principle had no influence. Laws of the market were suspended as were laws of the state.” For Habermas, the mass media, and notably the press, were a public sphere in appearance only.4 They were more or less influenced, interfered with and restricted by the state and their owners. While the concept of the public sphere has been modified and applied in different ways to explain social movements and the mass media, this paper puts it into the Thai context to examine the interplay between the government of Prime Minister Prayut and media users, in a situation where the former wants to restrict if not fully control that sphere, and where the latter try to expand it for their own reasons.