Thai Constitution on Twitter

Abstract

Due to the constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand B.E. 2560 (2017) sets many rules that are different from the constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand B.E. 2540 (1997) and the constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand B.E. 2550 (2007). Therefore, the study of Thai politics after the Thailand military coup in 2014 cannot overlook the significance of the constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand B.E. 2560 (2017). This study aims to examine the relevancy of the constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand B.E. 2560 (2017) as the determinant of Thailand’s political ecosystem. Nonetheless, after the 2019 Thailand general election, political environment during that time reinforced political parties and activists to campaign about the amendment of the constitution. As a result, the widespread interest in the amendment had increased significantly. This study uses social media listening tool (Zocial Eyes) to collect data from Twitter API for Academic Research, from 7 September 2016 to 31 December 2020, and selects three keywords; constitution, #whatthesenatorfor, and #สสร (constituent assembly) in order to examine the popular interest on the study. The findings show three main points 1) the keyword of “constitution” is the most comfortable word connecting between political events and the trend of popular interests over the constitution from twitter users, 2) the keyword of #whatthesenatorfor will appear significantly when there were the joint sittings of the national assembly which was the reaction on the senator’s role for opposing the amendment, and 3) people were not interested in the role of #สสร (constituent assembly). Moreover, the proposal for the amendment from people’s campaign through public participation had significantly sparked popular interest over the issue.