Thailand in the Mekong Region Countries’ Newspapers

Abstract

The Southeast Asian Countries launched the ASEAN Economic Community policy in 2015 that was the cause of news awareness in these countries. This article displays the topics of Thailand published on the international newspapers of Mekong region countries. The data were collected from popular international newspapers in Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam that were online published in 2016. This research is in the linguistic perspectives and use the content analysis as research framework. The research finding totally found 662 news that were published in 5 contents; society, economic, foreign relationship, sports, culture and education. More than half of Thailand’s news was published at Cambodia following by Vietnam, Myanmar, and Laos. Most topics in Thailand were society following by economy, sports, foreign relation, and culture and education, respectively. The society topic was highlighted in government activities and the central policy impacting Thai people. The economic topic was the most often published in Cambodia and Vietnam while the politic and society topics were more published in Laos and Myanmar than others. The economic topic was continuously published in all countries especially in Cambodia. The topic of sports was mostly published in Vietnam particularly football. There was not many news in the topics of foreign relationship, culture and education; however, they were presented the educational development participation and joined similar cultures between Thailand and Mekong region countries. The news of Thailand is not only to know what is happening in Thailand, but it also is implying how each country in the Mekong regions emphasize in Thailand. The future research should study the Thailand’s contents published in local language newspapers.