Roles of people's media for violence negotiation in deep South Thailand's peace process

Abstract

This research aims to study the negotiation role of people’s media against violence under the context of peace process in the deep south Thailand through an emergence and development of the public space initiated by local civil society actors. This research applies the qualitative methods to study the practices of 8 people’s media organizations during 2017-2018 by gathering data from the field works, as well as document analysis and textual analysis. Based on the analytical framework of the concepts of citizen’s media, public sphere, and speech acts, this study comprehends the public space in the southern border provinces began to develop among the groups of intellectuals and development practitioners in the early of the B.E. 2540s (1997-2007), of which they have gradually shifted toward peace-building approaches after the reemerging violence in 2004. The awakening of vibrant civil society in this region has associated with the extension of public spaces since the B.E. 2550s (2007-2017). At that time, local civil society substantially had their negotiating power in this utmost flourishing period of public space in the southern border region. However, it did not last long and finally deteriorated due to the three factors: 1) funding sources from international donors to support local projects came to end; 2) attempts of Thai state to interfere and limit public space and; 3) disagreement and internal conflicts among local civil society actors in using state-funded budget for their activities. Under this condition of the decline and shrinkage of public space in the region, it will take times for local civil society to capably perform their ideal roles representing as the third party to negotiate with violence of this region.

This study also specifies two important dimensions of the people’s media roles in southern border region. Firstly, people’s media has the role in communication process, which enabling ordinary people to become political actors, and empowering and transforming ordinary people “from the voiceless to voice.” Secondly, people’s media have the role in violence negotiation by the three communication approaches – confronting, creating space and the backdoor channel. Local civil society actors are using these approaches interactively in the same ecology of communication, while they are still facing big challenges to negotiate and convince the conflict parties to end the using of violence. The violence negotiation process of local civil society in the deep south Thailand using the three communication approaches to communicate the public can be varied according to the expansion of public space in 4 different forms under the context of “season of peace.” The most suitable and preferable season for violent negotiation is “the spring of peace” when civil society actors are empowered and capable to expand political space where conflicting parties are convinced to consider their political approaches in conflict negotiation during this utmost of flourishing peace condition.