Journalism and Communication Transformation in Thailand under the Disruption of Digital Technology in the 21st Century ()
1. Introduction
In the 21st century, demanding for the new competencies among all reporters, announces, communicators keep increasing in most parts of the world, especially about the digital technology disruption in the media world to serve the disruptive news industry transformation: digital technology, social platforms and the spread of misinformation and disinformation or fake news in short. Most of the functions in the media world keep changing into the online basis. The Office of NBTC (The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission) (2019), Thailand as the policy and regulation of communication system in Thailand has set up its first Broadcasting Master Plan (2012-2016) in 2010 as a guideline for the development and promotion of free and fair competition among operators, the regulating of audio broadcasting and television broadcasting services as well as to improve diversity of information for equal and universal access by the public and also to promote the quality of community service broadcasting operators.
NBTC is the regulation agency who leads holistic communication system of Thailand by working with the Ministry of Digital Economic and Society as the policy implementor, the Ministry of Prime Minister who leads the Public Relation Department of Thailand to do its function as the formal voicer of the Thai government, and also the Thai PBS (Thai Public Broadcasting Station) who leads all the public benefits broadcasting of the country. Its fame is the public participation under the “Citizen journalist” all over Thailand. So, as NBTC is the independent regulator agency, it has provided the tangible strategy for the development of broadcasting services quality through development of personnel, programs and operators in 1) to promote the quality of personnel in the audio broadcasting and television broadcasting services so that they can provide their services with responsibility and consideration to the public interests; 2) to promote the quality of audio broadcasting and television broadcasting programs; and 3) to promote the quality of audio broadcasting and television broadcasting services (https://www.nbtc.go.th). All aims are to equip all quality demands to all journalists, reporters in Thailand under the disruption of the digital communication technology and especially the social media which is one among the most diffusion of many contents, ranging from the personal to the societal levels especially in the political area. There are many contents produced overtly or covertly by the personal, the groups, and the governments. As a result, countless bloggers, Instagram “influencers” and YouTube stars story tellers, reporters, announcers, etc. with and without digital literacy, intention and un-intention, etc. In this context, also the emerging numbers of the independent journalists, the citizen journalists, the community reporters with their own “handy communication devices start from their smart phones”.
So, this comes up to be the requirement of the “re-define”, the “re-skill”, the “top-skill” for all journalist, reporters, and communicators at all levels and sectors in Thailand. What are the current communication and media ecology in Thailand now? What kinds of competency demands are the professional journalists, reporters, and communicators required and regulated by NBTC, Thailand as well as the international standard.
2. Literature Review
Thailand’s vision “Thailand becomes a developed country with security, prosperity and sustainability in accordance with the sufficiency economy philosophy” is the country’s vision stipulated in the national strategy, which can be referred to in short as the national motto of “security, prosperity and sustainability”. To pursue all the goals, communication system is one among its tools to uphold the country’s national security, independency and sovereignty; to facilitate all activities to build the country’s capacity to effectively deal with all kinds of changes and disruption especially the digital technology disruption. Challenges on communication and media world are spotlighted not only from the academia themselves but also from the society as a whole too. Because digital technologies open more and more interaction particularly online spaces to all people in the society especially the new generations with their digital DNA to be ready for any digital interaction. They can create and communicate any message by their own thoughts, their own devices, and their own time to shape up their own community and link to the others. This made today’s world all over the globe demanding for digital literacy for being the digital citizen or the netizen among all groups of each country.
2.1. Digital Citizenship
Under the midst of digital technology disruption, the digital citizenship is very important as being the foundation of digital intelligence. The digital world is today and influencing what that world will look like tomorrow. Digital communication competency turns to be the fundamental competency of the today citizen called “digital citizen”. The eight key competences is fundamental knowledge and skills required to cope with all emerging and disruptive digital technologies. Digital competence is essential for the holistic skills of people under the New Normal era: their life style, their new learning, and their workings, as well as their participation in all activities of the society. Some conclusion applied from DQ Institute (2021).
1) Digital citizen identity: the ability to build and manage their own identity online and offline with integrity;
2) Digital learning: the ability to empower themselves with all kinds of accessible learning sources;
3) Digital time management: the ability to manage their own digital time uses, multitasking with self-digital literacy engagement and creativity;
4) Cyberbullying skills and management: the ability to detect situations of cyberbullying and handle them appropriately and wisely;
5) Cybersecurity skills and management: the ability to protect one’s data by creating strong passwords and to manage various cyberattacks;
6) Privacy management: the ability to handle with discretion all personal information shared online to protect one’s and others’ privacy;
7) Critical thinking: the ability to distinguish, to analyze between true and false information, good and risked contents, and also all literate online deals;
8) Digital footprints: the ability to understand the nature of digital footprints and their real-life consequences and to manage them responsibly;
9) Digital humanism and empathy: the ability to communicate and show empathy, relationship towards one’s own and others’ needs and feelings both online and physically.
2.2. Digitalization Communication
Galina Melnik and Konstantin Pantserev (2020) mention that digitalization of the communication is an incentive for Innovation in Media Education due to the current undergoing major changes, influenced by digital tools include: 1) website (online chat; callback widget; analytics); 2) search engine marketing, SEJ and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helps to increase the visibility of a website in the search engine by users’ request keywords); 3) SMM (Social Media Marketing); 4) email newsletters; 5) content marketing; 6) SERM (Search Engine Reputation Management) aimed at enhancing brand credibility. SMM became popular in journalism, helps periodicals to expand their audience by attracting new friends from social networks. Journalist training programs now include disciplines related to understanding the marketing mechanisms of the existence of information. SMM is a new direction in the educational system. Students acquire new skills of attracting audience’s attention to mass media brand and information products. SMM is studied as a set of tools aimed at involving the audience in business activity. Future journalists learn new methods of work with an audience, for example, by using word of mouth (viral marketing). This requires not only efforts to enhance the credibility of a particular media, but also promotion on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. According to some researchers, online content created by professional journalists is surrounded by Internet blogs, personal online diaries and information platforms of several co-authors, and competes with them for audience reach. Education is aimed at developing the capability to work in a tough competitive environment, as university graduates have to compete with freelancers, bloggers, and all kinds of leaders. Trendsetters and influencers, who regularly communicate with their subscribers, set cultural trends, increase audience engagement, and interact directly with the source, helping innovators and early adapters tell their stories to the masses through social media. Technologies can replace human in certain areas. Big data, AI and robots capability in collecting any purposed information on a certain topic then can create any news, contents then can compete with the journalists.
2.3. Changing by the Click: The Communication Professional Development
Globally, journalism education has changed significantly over the past decade to keep abreast with the profession which has been through huge upheaval. The profession is transforming itself to keep relevant with the technological, audience and business model changes. It has also to deal in many countries with declining public trust in journalists and increased threats to both journalists’ safety and media freedom. The challenge for educators and the profession is only just beginning given unrelenting pace of change.
Changing by the Click: The Professional Development of UK Journalists (Colm Murphy, 2019) mentioned that changes in technology, audience engagement, the business model and ethical requirements have greatly expanded the skills required to be a professional journalist in the UK. His research used the UK journalism profession as a case study of change in a profession. It asked what were the changes in the profession since 2012. The research method includes an in-depth survey of 885 UK journalists, two previous similar surveys, interviews with stakeholders, national data and documentation. The study finds that UK journalist numbers, their educational attainment and workload has increased significantly in the period. The majority have become multi-platforms journalists who can work across platforms and mediums like prints and online. There has been a significant shift of job roles from traditional newsroom to a wide range of other organizations and some 36% of journalists are now self-employed. Diversity continues to be an issue with the profession having a white middle-class bias. The implications of these changes for future professional UK journalism education were then analyzed. They include the need to develop a national continuous professional development framework, better cooperation amongst competing accrediting bodies to enhance the public trust in journalists and greater flexibility on the professional pathways to senior qualification.
Educators must plan for this ever-changing profession’s future, and prepare teachers and students to cope with even greater turbulence throughout their careers. Drok (2007) mentioned about the future of journalism in the World Journalism Education Council (WJEC) as the main global journalism education body, there is a strong exchange of information between them on the curriculum. But the need for greater technical knowledge and agility has, in many countries. The profession’s fundamental core skills remain while new waves of technology and business models will come along all those outside of existing industry actors, Facebook and Google. The lines between journalism, advertising and public relations will continue to blur. All those challenges keep demanding for all changes of new skills developing enhancement amongst journalists such as digital fact checking, media analytics and entrepreneurship, vdeo, audio, graphics and other creative skills as well as law, language and especially ethics are tangible concerned. In addition, working style must be adjusted from sender-base to be the inactive, convergent and participative way of communication. Some of the networks, convergence relevant with digital technologies are demanding (http://www.worldsofjournalism.org/).
2.4. Journalism in the Network Model
The fundamentally changing context of professional journalism, summarized by the transition from the mass media model to the network model, is an extensive and complex process. It raises important questions for 21st century journalism. How to connect with the public? How to be of value in an environment where news is abundant and concentrated attention is scarce? How to develop a journalism that enables the public to come to grip with their problems? How to deal with important long-term issues in a way that offers the public new perspectives instead of more disillusion? These kinds of challenges are difficult to meet if journalists keep considering themselves mainly as detached disseminators of neutral information, as many still do according to the role perception studies that are carried out around the world (http://www.worldsofjournalism.org/) as shown in Figure 1.
In the digital era, the functions of communicator, reporters also change their demanding for the qualified competency of digital media and technologies multimedia and multi-tasks. Most of the new emerging courses keep updating, re-defining such as “Digital Culture: Technologies and Security”, “Digital Transformations in the Modern Information Society”, “Digital Language in the Digital Society”, “Convergence Media and Technologies”, “Creating Text for Online Media”, “Digital Story Telling”, etc. Thus, journalism and communication education must be re-defined by its integration among humanism, society context, educational pedagogy, information technologies, and creativity” to serve the new demands of each individual as well as the society as a whole.
3. Research Objectives
The “Journalism and Communication Transformation in Thailand under the Disruption of Digital Technology in the 21st Century” has its objectives as follow;
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Figure 1. From mass model to network model (http://www.worldsofjournalism.org/).
1) The current situation relevant to competency development in Journalism & Communication in Thailand; and
2) The future demands relevant to competency development in Journalism & Communication in Thailand.
4. Research Method
Mix methods are 1) quantitative research with e-questionnaire among 48 academia in communication fields and 2) qualitative research among 10 key informants from all relevant stakeholders: journalism & communication academia, media policy, media industries from all levels (the Start up, the company, the Broadcasting station, and the freelancer) Descriptive statistics and narration were used for data analysis.
5. Findings and Discussion
1) The current situation relevant to competency development in Journalism & Communication in Thailand: Working status and subject taught in Thailand found;
a) Working status of Thai teachers in Communication field: Most of Thai teachers teaching as the full-time basis in the public university followed by the private university. Some of the part-time teachers are mostly invited to top up in some of the special topic in the academy which are mostly on any update digital technology, the digital communication and tools such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Digital Advertising, A.I. (Artificial Intelligent) in advertising, A.I. in doing research: Marketing research, Advertising research, e-Advertising tools, Convergent media, e-Platform, etc. So, the external teachers are mostly invited occasionally from the industry media sector such as the Broadcasting Studio, the Television Program, the Production House, etc.
“The current students in communication field are more seen and like to be freelancers, Start Up, and Contract-base workers”.
“Multi-tasks skills and liberal working style are more seen and popular among the graduate from Communication field”.
“Some of the top jobs among all the current communication student or the journalism students are the social media influencer, creator, commenter, transmitter”.
“Under the current policy of Thai university system to be autonomous university, more and more people from media industries trend to change their jobs to be the university teachers especially in the Communication and media fields. And the university recruiting system is also open more or more flexible to welcome people from private sector or from media industries to be university teachers because they have more “hand on” experiences compared to the general university teacher”.
b) Subject taught in Communication field: In general are the fundamental subjects as the general knowledge e.g. Language, Humanities, economics, history, law, philosophy, ICT, Sciences and Technology then go further in the General Communication (principle, theories), Media theories, Journalism (skills, principles), PR (Public Relation), Advertising, IMC, Applied Communication and theories, Research method, and Case-base study, then final concluded with Project-base with real and holistic implementation.
“Subject taught as well as curriculum development in private university mostly more flexible in all adjustment to serve the demands of the labour market compared to public university”.
“More digital tools and digitalization communication are much faster adjusted in all private universities such as e-Advertising, e-Marketing communication, digital movie making, e-music creation, etc.”
“Some more concerns about the ethics in functioning the journalist’s duty. Some of the top issues are: neutrality, transparency, personal benefits, privacy, fairness, diversity respects”.
“More collaborations among private university and media industries are more tangible and flexible. Especially to open collaboration for practicum and Project’s implementation”.
2) The future importance tasks that professional journalists (communicators) should perform in the next 10 years found top 2 tasks: a) Get information to the public quickly (M = 12.3), and b) Get information to the public quickly (M = 12.3). Then followed with all the equal importance (M = 9.25) are: a) Provide entertainment and relaxation; b) Expose social abuses; c) Give ordinary people a chance to express their views; d) Provide information that people need to make political decisions; e) Monitor and scrutinize civil society organizations; f) Motivate people to get socially involved; and g) Point people toward possible solutions for societal problems as shown in Table 1.
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Table 1. The future importance tasks that professional journalists (communicators) should perform in the next 10 years.
*(1 Much Lower, 2 Lower, 3 Same as now, 4 Higher, 5 Much higher, 99 Don’t know).
“Due to speed and amount of contents, the in-depth or the quality of content will be very hard to verified, to check while a quick snapshot content seems to be more and more which leads to any risk mis-information of even fake information”.
“Multi-tasks journalist, reporters, communicators must be trained including the entrepreneurship knowledge and skills”.
“The topic ‘Give ordinary people a chance to express their views’ is very challenges because right now anyone can be the sender, can express their views but how can all these people can be the quality voicer, the heard voicer, and also the quality voicer whom are responsible to their own society. People reporter or people journalist will be more seen and qualified”.
3) The position of journalists (communicators) in society (“neutrality”) and with regard to reality/truth (“objectivity”). Top position that a journalist should do is “be transparent about the working process” (M = 9.50); follow by the other four position with its same level are: a) be a detached observer (M = 9.50); b) promote social change (M = 9.25); c) remain strictly impartial (M = 9.25); and d) be a neutral disseminator of information (M = 9.25) as shown in Table 2.
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Table 2. The position of journalists (communicators) in society.
*(1 Strongly disagree, 2 Disagree, 3 Neutral, 4 Agree, 5 Strongly agree, 99 Don’t know).
“Representation of ‘Fact’ is the key, by providing quality information. All public or people can make their own informed decision without being mis-led to certain agenda”.
“The topic of ‘influence public opinion’. It must be every opinion not just only the opinion from just 1 side”.
“The topic of ‘mirror reality as it is’. Sometimes the fact from every sides are the reality so we have to be careful on finding what is the reality. This is the key position of the journalist”.
“Be professional, neutral, transparent, fairness, and diversity respect should be all first priority of the journalist, reporters, and communicators”.
4) The Un-acceptable professional ethics among journalists (communicators). The professional ethics on certain practices can be accepted found top 5 un-acceptable in Thailand’s context as follow; a) claim to be somebody else (M = 7.4); b); use confidential government documents without authorization (M = 7.4); c) use personal documents without permission (M = 7.4); d) publish a story with unverified content (M = 7.4); and e) accept money from sources (M = 7.4) as shown in Table 3.
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Table 3. The Un-acceptable professional ethics among journalists (communicators).
*(1 Strongly disagree, 2 Disagree, 3 Neutral, 4 Agree, 5 Strongly agree, 99 Don’t know).
“Being a representation of fact and transparency, should be the backbone of professional ethic throughout the process from getting the information, usage of information and communicate the information”.
“All journalists must strictly follow the norms and ethics of their carreer. They standard Professional Career of Communicator (announcers, reporters, journalists).
“Be professional, ethics, neutral, transparent, fair, human respect must the fundamental roles of the reporters, journalist”.
5) The direction of professional journalism (communication) that should be “redefined” in the 21st century
The direction of professional journalism (communication) that should be “redefined” in the 21st century found top 4 directions as follow: a) more about social responsibility and less about earning money (M 7.4); b) more about consensus and less about conflict (M7.4); c) more about consensus and less about conflict (M7.4); and d) more about successes and less about failures (M7.4) as shown in Table 4.
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Table 4. The direction of professional journalism (communication) that should be “redefined” in the 21st century found.
*(1 Strongly disagree, 2 Disagree, 3 Neutral, 4 Agree, 5 Strongly agree, 99 Don’t know).
“Professional journalism provides an access that society can enter public ‘fact’ without being influenced or influence other. Therefore, current happening, long term issues are equally important for public to make informed decision”.
“‘a. More about social responsibility and less about earning money’ I’m agree with this but journalists also have to live their life so their employer should pay them as much as they should have”.
6) The qualifications of the (beginning) journalists (communicators) in the next ten years found most of the qualifications are all demanded to be the journalists in the next ten years as follow; a) Know current events and their context (M = 9.25); b) Discover newsworthy issues on the basis of in-depth research (M = 9.25); c) Organise contributions from the public (M = 9.25); d) Have a more specialised knowledge in a field (M = 9.25); e) Be able to find multiple perspectives on an issue (M = 9.25); f) Interact with the public (M = 9.25); g) Interact with the public (M = 9.25); h) Select information on the basis of reliability (M = 9.25); i) Select information on the basis of relevance (M = 9.25); j) Use different types of story-telling techniques (M = 9.25); k) Make journalistic use of technology; l) Present content in effective combinations of words, sounds and visuals (M = 9.25); m) Take responsibility for the choices you made during the process (M = 9.25); n) Take responsibility for the choices you made during the process (M = 9.25); o) Take responsibility for the impact of your product (M = 9.25); p) Take responsibility for the impact of your product (M = 9.25); q) Be able to recognize market opportunities (M = 9.25); r) Be able to develop new products/formats (M = 9.25); s) Reflect on the future of journalism (M = 9.25); and t) Provide workable solutions for complex practical issues that professional journalism faces (M = 9.25) as shown in Table 5.
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Table 5. The qualifications of the (beginning) journalists (communicators) in the next ten years.
*(1 Much Lower, 2 Lower, 3 Same as now, 4 Higher, 5 Much higher, 99 Don’t know).
“Technology will soon provide better quality and reliability of information with less time throughout the process from acquiring content to producing content. Therefore, being technology/digital incline will be the key to the future of reliable journalist”.
7) The future labour market for Journalist student within the next 10 years found the top labour market of the journalist in the next 10 years is Freelancing for established news organizations (M = 9.25); then follow by the other 6 labour market as follow; a) Having a contracted job at an established news organization (M = 7.40); b) Doing journalism at a start-up/new outlet (M = 7.40); c) Working at a media production company (M = 7.40); d) Doing part-time journalism and part-time something else (M = 7.40); e) Working in a PR/communication job (M = 7.40); and f) Working outside of journalism and communication (M = 7.40 as shown in Table 6.
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Table 6. The future labour market for Journalism (Communication) student within the next 10 years.
*(1 Much Lower, 2 Lower, 3 Same as now, 4 Higher, 5 Much higher, 99 Don’t know).
8) The qualifications of the Journalism (Communication) teachers in the next 10 years found the top one is Having knowledge in a specialised field (M = 12.3). The other top five are: a) Having didactical-pedagogical knowledge and skills (M = 7.4); b) Having a wide general knowledge (M = 7.4); c) Having knowledge in a specialised field (M = 7.4); d) Having research skills (M = 7.4); e) Having linguistic skills (M = 7.4); and f) Having technical skills for digital media (M = 7.4) as shown in Table 7.
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Table 7. The qualifications of the Journalism (Communication) teachers in the next 10 years.
*(1 Much Lower, 2 Lower, 3 Same as now, 4 Higher, 5 Much higher, 99 Don’t know).
6. Conclusion
The “Journalism and Communication Transformation in Thailand under the Disruption of Digital Technology in the 21st Century” has its two main objectives: 1) the current situation relevant to competency development in Journalism & Communication in Thailand, and 2) the future demands relevant to competency development in Journalism & Communication in Thailand. Mix methods among 48 academia and 10 stakeholders were studied then analyzed by descriptive statistics and narration. Findings and Discussion are;
1) The current situation relevant to competency development in Journalism & Communication in Thailand found: a) Working status of Thai teachers in Communication field found most are working as full-time basis in the public university followed by the private university. Some of the part-time teachers are mostly invited to top up in some of the special topics in the academy which are mostly on any update digital technology, the digital communication and tools such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Digital Advertising, A.I. (Artificial Intelligent) in advertising, A.I. in doing research, e-Advertising tools, Convergent media, e-Platform, etc. and b) Subjects taught in Communication field: In general are the fundamental subjects as the general knowledge e.g. Language, Humanities, economics, history, law, philosophy, ICT, Sciences and Technology then go further in the General Communication (principle, theories), Media theories, Journalism (skills, principles), PR (Public Relation), Advertising, IMC, Applied Communication and theories, Research method, and Case-base study, then final concluded with Project-base with real and holistic implementation.
2) The future demands relevant to competency development in Journalism & Communication in Thailand found: a) The future importance tasks that professional journalists (communicators) should perform in the next 10 years found top in: “get information to the public quickly” (M = 12.3); b) The position of journalists (communicators) in society found top position that a journalist should do is “be transparent about the working process” (M = 9.50); c) The un-acceptable professional ethics among journalists (communicators) found the top un-acceptable are; i) “claim to be somebody else” (M = 7.4); ii); “use confidential government or personal documents without authorization” (M = 7.4); iii) “publish a story with unverified content” (M = 7.4); d) The direction of professional journalism (communication) that should be “redefined” in the 21st century found top directions are: i) “more about social responsibility and less about earning money” (M 7.4); ii) “more about consensus and less about conflict” (M7.4); and iii) “more about successes and less about failures” (M7.4); e). The qualifications of the (beginning) journalists (communicators) in the next ten years found most consensus on i) “know current events and their context” (M = 9.25); ii) “discover newsworthy issues on the basis of in-depth research” (M = 9.25); iii) “organise contributions from the public (M = 9.25); iv) “have a more specialised knowledge in a field” (M = 9.25); f) The future labour market for Journalism (Communication) student within the next 10 years found “freelancing” (M = 9.25); then followed by i) “having a contracted job at any established news organization” (M = 7.40); ii) “doing journalism at a start-up/news outlet” (M = 7.40); g) The qualifications of the Journalism (Communication) teachers in the next 10 years found the top one is “having knowledge in a specialised field” (M = 12.3).
The overall findings found aligned with the current demands of this digital disruption era the functions of journalists, communicators acquiring the qualities of digital multimedia, digital multi-tasks or mastering with digital media capacity such as working with information via modern digital technologies. Understand with updating knowledge and skills in all these relevant fields such as “Digital Culture: Technologies and Security”, “Digital Transformations in the Modern Information Society”, “Language of Effective Communication in the Digital Society”, “Convergence Technologies of Today’s Editorial Staff”, “Creating Text for Online Media”, etc. Thus, journalism and communication education in this digital era must be integrated designed agilely among all sectors in the digital technology ecology: humanism, digital technology and media with its well fit designed by all appropriated educational pedagogies.