Youth Representations in Thai Online Newspapers: Critical News Analysis

Abstract

            Youth representations resulted from discursive practices could provide information that people use to understand and determine attitudes towards youth. Thus, to create social awareness, this documentary research aims to critically analyze Thai online newspapers’ construction of representations of youth through linguistic strategies. The methodology utilized in the study is a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis focusing on news reporting of youth from selected Thai online newspapers (i.e. Thairath, Khaosod, and Kom Chad Luek) over a six-year period between July 2016 and July 2022. The news content was analyzed, and the frequency of news focal points was calculated to rank the meaning of youth representations that were repeatedly reproduced. News reporting that showed the most prominent representations of youth was used as an example to demonstrate linguistic strategy analysis. The results suggest that the most reproduced youth representations depict young people as troublemakers causing safety issues in society in the form of harms or disturbances of peace in communities or public places. By deducing from the analysis of all the news reproducing those representations, 3 linguistic strategies were found to support the power of discourses delivered by political-economic to provide legitimacy in controlling young people: 1) discursive practices of presupposition, presumption, or precognition; 2) condemnation or conviction by using linguistic violence; and 3) using ethical criteria, laws, and moral principles to distinguish good from evil.