A Content Analysis of Thai PBS Citizen News Reports

Abstract

This research aims at analyzing the content of ThaiPBS’s Citizen Report news program. The study selected 185 samples during the period of June 12, 2008 to June 15, 2012, and found that there are merely 8 pieces of news produced by professional ThaiPBS reporters. All of them present the importance and legitimacy of communication rights and outcome of being a citizen reporter. A discourse of citizen journalism is constructed through positive opinion and real experiences of ThaiPBS citizen reporters as sources with the professional style of reporting. The rest of 177 pieces produced by ThaiPBS citizen journalists, on the other hand, contain news peg involving their local communities, ranging from their lifestyle, serious consequences of government’s policies and industrial sector’s development, as well as indispensable and indigenous knowledge and wisdom. These citizen’s reports illustrate a distinctive style of an individually unique story-telling based on their life experience following self-management and self-depending paradigm. Most of sources are local people applying professional manner of reporting namely inverted pyramid, upright pyramid, chronological order and combination style. The content includes many significant discourses such as alternative development, traditional agriculture, as well as thainess and otherness discourse.