Agenda Setting and Cross Media News Reporting of The Standard: Thailand Youth Political Movement 2020

Abstract

The article aims to study the agenda setting of the Standard, an online news agency, as sender on its website and its cross-media reporting between the website and Instagram on the youth political movement in Thailand which were Free Youth/Free People, the United Front of Thammasat and Demonstration, and the People from February 21 to December 26, 2020. This is a qualitative research based on a content analysis of 330 pieces of news and articles from the Standard, applying agenda-setting theory and the 4 stages of a new social movement development concept, as well as multimedia, and cross-media concepts. The study found that the Standard’s news reporting generated salience to the youth political movement 2020 through news values regarding conflict, timeliness, and impact. (1) At the emergence stage, the news focused on the contentious disagreement of the Constitutional Court that dissolved the Future Forward Party, which represented democracy. (2) The coalescence stage started when the students in leading universities joined together to publicize the demand of democracy and the people's constitution. The Standard reported the sense of collective contentious in academic institutes over Thailand. (3) The bureaucratization stage brought about formalization of anti-government organizations that shared the same political demands, which were the resignation of Prime Minister, Prayut Chan-o-cha, the passage of amendment bills to pave the way for a brand-new charter, and reforms of the monarchy. The news reflected the youth movement’s major events significantly as well as high support from the mass, especially youths. The youth political movement turned violent and challenged the monarchy, resulting in a state of emergency in Bangkok to outlaw movement activities. (4) The decline stage was caused by increased state action to control, disperse protests and arrests of key protest leaders, which resulted in free direction and collective movement. Therefore, the people organization announced that everyone could be a leader in the political movement. The rallies were held independently in many areas at the same time, and while they received widespread support, they diluted the momentum of the youth movement. In addition, the second wave of COVID-19 in December led to a political deadlock in the movement.

According to cross-media reporting between Standard's news website and Instagram, the study discovered that the major multimedia used in the Standard's news website were news writing, photographs,

and live broadcasting/video, which aided the agenda setting of the youth political movement in terms of legitimacy and mass intention rather than news about the oppositions neither state nor the contra-protests. The outstanding of applying new media advantage was news reporting and add on news continuously when time passed by in a single news for receivers to follow core event in one news. Moreover, photographs and live broadcasting were used as short cut to dynamic youth movements. The most of cross-media reporting is done in cross-media not transmedia which means that the content in both channels is insignificant different. Although the numbers of photographs are used in Instagram but the news reporting has not applied to maximize Instagram’s potential.

Finally, the Standard had an impact on what people should think about and in which direction they should think about it by setting agendas in favor of youth political movements. And cross-media reporting of the Standard between the website and Instagram has not reached both platforms' potential.