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The Perception of Risk Society in Thailand

Abstract

Thailand is now facing many challenges including social, economic and political problems. During the administration of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a number Thai people enjoyed his populist policy changes in the fields of public health, education, anti-drug, and social welfare. At the same time however, Thaksin’s government has also been frequently accused of corruption, criticized for its engagement in projects creating conflicts of interest, and violation of human rights. After Prime Minister Thaksin announced a House dissolution on February 24, 2006, Thailand’s political impasse accelerated to a crisis. The research was conducted during the climate of political uncertainty in Thailand (March – September 2006). The research objectives were:
1. To examine the perception of risk society among Thai people;
2. To define “safe society” in Thai social context;
3. To identify the components of risk in Thai society.

The research adopted a qualitative approach using focus group discussions and document analysis. The sample comprised four groups of Thai people (312 children, women, seniors and disabled persons) in four main rural regions. The data were collected through purposive sampling.

The research found that the perception of risk society among Thai people varied according to their socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, with distinctive differences among the four groups of samples. The top ten social risks mentioned by the samples were those associated with: health, economics, food, education, family, crime, residence, work, moral, media and technology. The research also showed that most risks were classified as personal risks. However the researchers concluded that Thai people perceived “safe society” as:

“The society where its members can live their daily lives without fear of lacking/instability in food security, family, residence, communities, and environments. The people were provided equal opportunities and extensive means to access health and education services. They had secured employment and adequate income in order to live their lives on the “sufficiency economy” concept. Their perception of a safe society should be risk- free from natural disasters, accidents, violence, drug and crime. The people should be offered/provided with media literacy and protected equally by law and political rights. Society should be magnanimous, its members upholding high morale and values, appreciative of religion, and noble-minded.

Digital Opportunity Index (DOI)

The digital divide is presently at the center of international development concerns. Many countries around the world have set up the strategies to eliminate the divide. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has developed the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) as a tool for mapping of digital opportunity worldwide. The DOI is the first e-index based on internationally agreed ICT indicators. This makes it a valuable tool for benchmarking those indicators considered to be the most important for measuring the information society. Because the indicators used for the DOI have been endorsed by the international community, they will increasingly be collected over time by countries, adding to the coverage of the index enhancing its inclusiveness.
The core infrastructure and use of ICTs by households and individuals indicators selected for constructing the DOI lend themselves to various analytical possibilities. On one hand, the index can be deconstructed along categories such as opportunity, infrastructure and utilization. This assists analysts to determine where countries are relatively strong and weak in order to focus attention on the appropriate area. On the other hand, the DOI lends itself to a fixed/mobile de-aggregation, useful for analyzing the degree to which each is impacting the path countries are taking towards becoming an information society.

The situation of digital divide in developing countries still need further attention. There are many issues concerning the divide other than the accessibility. Therefore serious action should be taken at all levels in order to bridge this gap, and provide more opportunities for people in developing countries to participate in the process of using multimedia and ICT for development.

The Gender Digital Divide

There is also the digital divide between men and women in most countries. In 1990s most women within developing countries were in the deepest part of the divide. The digital divided issues included (UNIFEM Central and Eastern Europe, 2004).
• Access and control. Women had less opportunities to access to ICT than
men, as well as less power to decide how ICT are used and who had access to them;
• Education, training and development. This thematic areas included gender-sensitive training; focus on finding; managing; producing and disseminating information; developing policies and strategies for effective interventions; illiteracy; language;
• Industry and labor. This issue included tele-work, home-based work, health and environmental concerns, and the wage gap,
• Content and language. Women’s viewpoints, knowledge and interests were not adequately represented. Propagation of gender stereotypes persisted in online content. The English language dominated;
• Privacy and security. This involved the need to secure online spaces; international sharing of experiences of oppression; abuse of women’s rights; violence against women; trafficking; threats to a basic rights framework; government justification; and the creation of safe spaces, free from state censorship, monitoring and surveillance.
• Trafficking, pornography and censorship. These issues highlighted the use of ICT for propagation of violence against women, trafficking and pornography.
• Power and decision-making. Women remained underrepresented at all levels. Women had no access to control resources in ICT, and the bias of these being purely ‘technical’ areas prevailed. Space for civil society viewpoints was limited, and control over deregulation and privatization of telecommunication industry processes was compounded;
• Putting ICT to strategic use. The focus should be put on how to attract attention to issues of concern to women, reinforcing solidarity campaigns, enhancing traditional women’s networking activities, defending the rights of women to participate equally in civil and public life, and tackling marginalization and exclusion;
• The right to communicate. Advocacy for a new ICT environment must fully integrate gender concerns and women’s advancement. It is equally important to advocate for the right to communicate as a fundamental human right. Central to this strategy must be an agenda that strived for women’s equality, empowerment, advancement and gender justice.

Hafkin and Taggart (2001) also studied the situation of gender digital divide in developing countries and also found that most women Internet users in almost all developing countries are not representative of women in the country as a whole, but rather are part of a small, urban educated elite. The obstacles to women’s access to the ICT included literacy and education, language, time, cost, geographical location of facilities, social and cultural norms, and women’s computer and information search and dissemination skills. The study yielded the same results discussed by Goyal (2003) that women had less online access than men did, because they had less time, money, control, learning opportunities. Moreover women had more of other commitments, and they gave priority to others’ needs.

Digital Divide

The information and communication technology (ICT) has become a major force in transforming social, economic, and political life globally. Without its incorporation into the information age, there is little chance for countries or regions to develop (Hafkin & Taggart, 2001).
The digital divide is the socio-economic difference between communities in their access to computers and the Internet. The term also refers to gaps between groups in their ability to use ICT effectively, due to differing literacy and technical skills, and the gap in availability of quality, useful digital content (wikipedia.org, 2007).
Although the below table shows an increasing number of Internet users overtime, it is clear that the digital divide exists among world regions. For example, while 69.4% of population in North America have access to the Internet, only 3.5 % of those in Africa do. However, we can see the dramatically increase of Internet users in Africa, Middle East, and Latin America, which reflects the narrowing gap between the developed and developing countries.

Multimedia and Learning

People retain only 20% of what they see and 30% of what they hear. But they remember 50% of what they see and hear, and as much as 80% of what they see, hear, and do simultaneously. When we incorporate multimedia into an application, more of our senses are activated. Consequently, one reason to use multimedia is to give life to flat information (Hofstetter, 1995).
Multimedia can be used to encourage constructivism. Constructivism is a philosophy of learning holding that students interact with real-life experience that surrounds them. This premise contrasts to behaviorism which perceives the teacher as the manipulator of an environment that is experienced by the learners.


Chinese Proverb ...
“Tell me and I will forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I will understand.”
CAI (computer assisted instruction) is popular use of multimedia in education. The applications include:
• Tutorial
• Drill and Practice
• Simulation
• Games
• Discovery
• Problem solving
• Test
World Wide Web
Today the Internet is recognized as a powerful tool for development. The world wide web is the complete set of documents residing on all Internet servers that use the HTTP (hypertext transfer) protocol, accessible to users via a simple point-and-click system (answer.com, February 2007). Therefore multimedia can be completely integrated to the world wide web and promote the use of the Internet for development at all levels.

Multimedia for Development

At first glance, the primary benefit of multimedia is the combination of several traditional media. Text offers clarity and self-pacing. The spoken word can be even more accessible. Graphics provide visualization and communicate style. Music imparts mood and character. Video captures the moving events of the world surround us. Computers store and access vast amounts of information. Various combinations of these media and disciplines can indeed be formidable communication vehicles. The applications of multimedia in various areas include, but not limited to, art, education, entertainment, engineering, medicine, mathematics, business, and scientific research. Below are the several examples as follows:
Education and training
• Computer aided instruction
• Distance and interactive training
• Multimedia Encyclopedias
Operations
• Command and control
• Process control
• CAD/CAM
• Air traffic control
• On-line monitoring
• Multimedia security systems
Public
• Digital libraries
• Electronic museum
• Network kiosk systems (medical, legal, banking, shopping, tourist)
Home
• Video on demand
• Interactive TV
• Home shopping
• Remote home care
• Electronic album
• Personalized electronic journals
Business/Office
• Executive information systems
• Remote consulting systems
• Video conferencing
• Multimedia mail
• Multimedia documents
• Advertising
• Collaborative work
• Electronic publishing
Education is an extremely powerful application for multimedia. The value of supplementing dry textbooks with films and video has been recognized for years. Many schools in many countries today are chronically underfunded and occasionally slow to adopt new technologies, but the power of multimedia can be maximized for the long-term benefit to all. Business applications for multimedia include presentations, training, marketing, advertising, production demos, databases catalogues, and networked communications. Moreover, at our homes, most multimedia reach our families via television sets, VCD, DVD, and computers with various educational and entertaining content.

Multimedia System

Although the definition of multimedia is a simple one, making it work can be complicated. The users need to know how to use multimedia computer tools and technologies to weave them together. Multimedia system is a system capable of processing multimedia data and applications (Coorough, 2001).

The software vehicle, the messages, and the content presented on a computer or television screen – together constitute a multimedia project (Vaughan, 2001). A multimedia project need not to be interactive to be called multimedia. People can sit back and watch multimedia just as they watch movie or television. The way users start watching multimedia at the beginning and running through an end is called “linear.” When users are given navigational control and can wander through the content at will, multimedia becomes “nonlinear” and “interactive,” and is a powerful gateway to information (Vaughan, 2001).

Hypertext Hypertext is a computer-based text retrieval system that enables a user to access particular locations in webpages or other electronic documents by clicking on links within specific webpages or documents. (answers.com, 2006).

Hypermedia Hypermedia is a term used as a logical extension of the term hypertext. Hypermedia is not constrained to be text-based. It can include other media, e.g., graphics, images, and especially the continuous media – sound and video, to create a generally non-linear medium of information. This contrasts with multimedia, which, although often capable of random access in terms of the physical medium, is essentially linear in nature.
The World Wide Web is a classic example of hypermedia, whereas a movie on a DVD is an example of standard multimedia. The lines between the two can (and often do) blur depending on how a particular technological medium is implemented (http://www.cs. Sfu.Ca/CourseCentral/365/li/material/notes/Chap1/Chap1.html#History).

Multimedia Definition

At the most basic level, multimedia means using more than one media. However, the term “multimedia” can be defined in many more different ways, for example:

• Multimedia is the combined use of several media, such as movies, slides, music, and lighting, especially for the purpose of education or entertainment (American Heritage Dictionary).


• Multimedia is any combination of text, graphic art, sound, animation, and video delivered to you by computer or other electronic means (Vaughan, 2001).


• Multimedia is the integration of text, graphics, animation, sound, and video. Today, such integration is accomplished by digitizing different media elements and manipulating them with computer software (Coorough, 2001).