a podcast episose with Dr Teerada Chongkolrattanaporn
In this conversation, Ana Adi and Ne discuss the evolution and significance of public relations (PR), particularly in the context of climate change campaigns and the application of framing theory. Ne shares her journey from academia to becoming the head of a PR department, emphasizing the power of PR in shaping public perception and behavior. They explore the importance of understanding cultural specificity in framing messages, the role of social media in amplifying campaigns, and the ethical considerations in framing. The discussion also touches on the challenges of measuring the effectiveness of PR efforts and the future of PR practices in Thailand. For other Women in PR episodes check this section of the website or the YouTube channel.
Takeaways (AI generated with Riverside.fm)
- PR is a powerful tool for societal change.
- Framing theory is essential for effective communication.
- Cultural context is crucial in PR campaigns.
- Social media accelerates the framing process.
- You cannot force a frame; it must resonate with the audience.
- Repetition and consistency are key in messaging.
- Understanding audience frames is vital for PR success.
- Ethics in framing is important to avoid manipulation.
- Measuring PR effectiveness requires both quantitative and qualitative methods.
- The future of PR in Thailand needs a shift from traditional practices.
Transcript (unedited – AI generated with RIverside.fm)
Ana Adi (00:06.904)
So, Ne, thanks so much for making time today and welcome to the show.
Ne
Hello. Tell me a little bit about you. So you work in PR and you’re teaching at a university. How did you end up in public relations? OK, let me introduce you real quick first. My name is Nei. That’s much easier to call, but my full name is Teerada Chongkonrattanaporn. Currently, I’m actually work in university, as you mentioned.
And I just got this lucky position, I would say as a head of public relations department. So yeah, let’s get back to when I started. I actually graduated in arts, know, like humanities, you know, so I don’t really have any background with this PR kind of stuff. But then when I studied my master degree in the US, I took class called Public Relations Communication. So it kind of like opened my views on professions of PR. And then when I came back to Thailand after my master degree, I started my job in University, Assumption University. I started teaching in Faculty of Communication Art. Well, when I started, actually taught in department of advertising. So within that department, they also have this little class called introduction to public relations. And that’s how I really got into like real chunk of PR theoretically. Now, and then I started my PhD.
I think it’s interesting to see how powerful PR is. And at that time, 10 years ago, more than, yeah, literally 10 years ago, because I finished my PhD in 2013. yeah, back then the climate change, at that time we call it global warming is very popular. So I really want to see how these environmental campaigns, you know, play a role in society. And that’s how I ended up like, really working on research on PR. I looked at global warming campaigns and use framing theory plus effectiveness of PR. So looking at like outputs, outcomes and stuff and impacts and see how we should reconsider the power of PR campaigns. It’s much more powerful than we thought. Yes. Do you remember what you have found out? it that glowing and glowing is a stronger image? Is it has more appeal? Is it remembered better or is it climate change? It’s interesting because I broke down into three framing like part
Because when it comes to campaigns, first we have to look at the sources of campaigns, right? So we particular, not we, I particular look at the global warming campaigns of Bangkok administration, Bangkok metropolitan administration. it’s like local government of Bangkok because they’re actually the very first ones to work on these campaigns, you know. So we look on that and then as well as those experts in climate change. So it’s interesting because when it comes to using framing to analyze, to investigate how they frame the global warming is that they see it as something like with the authority, know, like it’s like that job to do it, like, you know, like the government has to talk about it. But when we look at PR camp head execution itself. Look at the execution and their messages, their visual images, as well as talking to the campaigners. It turned out that the messages more like, how to say it, like more like informative, like telling people what to do, you know. And last but not least, I also look at our target audience, Bangkok kids, Bangkok people, you know.
And it turned out that they think it’s more like a social issue. Like 10 years ago, we still got King Ramanai, who’s very, I would say, who’s very influential on sufficient economy. So back then, kind of like, the lay people, they don’t really see climate change problem as scientific problem, but more like social problem that… You know, have to take care of this issue because we will help save the world. We will help to save the environment. And it goes along with the King’s teaching, like the sufficient economy. So my results from that research turned out that you cannot just see things from one end, you know, like, because when we talk about the machine people think scientific problem, but in fact, lay people or our target audience do not see things that way. So you have to like find the, from my research, I use the word like the mix of something tangible and some belief, know, put it together to make the, this work. And of course we figured this out because we use this framing, the framing theory to somehow like create the questions and also decide the research instruments.
Ana Adi (06:51.854)
Yeah, tell me a little bit more. How did you come across framing theory? mean, framing theory is around, at least in communication research since the 90s, but there are precedents in the late 70s and 80s with loads of experiments that were done usually on text, isn’t it? So people were asked exactly as you said it, so for sort of opposing, similar but opposing concepts. or potentially opposing, right? Because you have climate change summons in your mind the idea that something is going to be different, whereas global warming is amplifying this idea of warmth. So you go with one construct, right? I play with this in my classroom, funnily enough, and we’ll see what AI comes up with. But we were looking on Google Images and they do conjuretwo very different sets, slightly different sets by now, but initially there were two very different sets of images, you know, where global warming was related to the planet and it showed you, you know, a planet in fire, whereas climate change, brought you winds and polar bears being extinct. Anyways, how did you end up looking at framing and my understanding is that you still continue to do research on framing. It’s something that stayed very close, right? It’s the aftermath of a PhD. It’s lifelong of framing. Yeah. Because I guess back then I took like coursework in my PhD class, right? And it turned out that everyone would say that only journalists can create these frames. And I was like, no, no, no. As a PR person, yes.
Ne
I was like, no, like this is not the only thing. mean, generally is not the only group that can actually create these frames. I had to like, even like my, well, I actually went to many advisors, you know, like back then and first at, first potential advisor, she’s actually from journalists department. And when I, when I proposed her this, she said, no, this wouldn’t work, you know, cause they, they won’t believe that. And that’s why I said, okay, I need to prove this. That, you know, as a PR campaigns, we can actually create this frame and the frame itself can, but in order to also create the perfect framing, you gotta know what kind of frame they already have. So that’s why in that sense, I came up with the idea of like, of incorporate framing into PR works, you know, cause back then people would see PR as, know, like information center, like you only write news, press release and news release and you use journalists to be the one to create the frame. But I try to say that no, like media relations is only one way of doing it. So I guess, yeah, I just want to prove something, personally and professionally that our PR job can do much more better than people think. that is like, it can be shown that somehow there’s PR campaign, you know, set some kind of, set some kind of thinking in the mindset in people’s perception as well. Cause as I said, when they say, climate change or global warming here in Thailand, and they somehow talk about sufficient economy as well, it’s there in people’s mind, you know. So I guess that’s when I started and I still believe in this even like Edmund and actually that’s another, Professor Hella Han, he’s also worked on this. I guess, you know, we, I’m not, I’m not going to say I, I and him together, but we try to say that PR works are more powerful than you think. Yeah. So I also apply these for another project called No Dam. So No Dam is a small, I would say it’s not really a PR campaign, but it’s a fight of one person. But from investigating and analysis, what he did, it’s exactly the PR works, know? And this is exactly how he like apply PR tools and eventually create some mindset and became a successful case, you know? So I also did that article on No Dam. It’s, you know, the protest against the construction of the dam, in a province here in Thailand. So that’s another interesting case as well.
Ana Adi (11:42.23)
So tell me a little bit more about this. mean, let’s go back. When you say framing, what do you exactly mean? I mean, you and I may be partly theorists and working in academia, this is known to us, but what is framing and how do you go about it as a practitioner? Why is it such a great deal to think about what we do as consultants and as communication specialists. has a bad ring to it, right? Framing comes from crime stories when somebody is accused of something wrong, isn’t it? But it’s not that. Framing is already something that we as PR person does all the time. Because not only we tell them what to think about, but we also try to tell them how to think about it. So back to my example of my study on climate change, not only do we want to tell them like, what is climate change, but we somehow put some values in it, you know, and we somehow trying to change the way they think about it and the way they react, you know, toward it. So it’s already something that we do. And I guess we probably just do it automatically, due to the objectives, whatever. But once you come back to this word framing, you can see that what you do can create this certain mindset or certain canvas in your target audience minds. And that’s the important of how PR should be aware that you can not only focus on what you have to say, because once your framing doesn’t fit the framing of your target audience, it wouldn’t work. See?
‘Cause most of the time when we do, communications or in our case, and you know, on PR, we, most of the time we know our target audience, like demographically, you know, and you know, the message, I don’t know, probably socially or even like, from the corporate, but we don’t really see it, you know, underneath like, okay, what kind of, what is the framing that they think about this thing? And if we want to talk about this thing, how we would fit that framing, into the frame as well. So that’s how I see the process is framing, but you gotta understand the frames within the minds of your target audience and you gotta decide your frames to fit that frames. So that’s, yeah, that’s, guess, the whole process. So how do we do that? So for a communication practitioner, because you spoke about messages.
How do we go and identify frames? It sounds like a craft, right? It sounds like something that you can definitely create, that you can plan, that you can measure. Tell me a little bit more. How do you see from your work and your studies, how can that be transferred into the real world and practitioners can use that more consciously in a thin?
Ne
Definitely. I’ll just use the example from my work because I work on this climate change, right? And speaking of frames in climate change, you know, you got to understand how the experts and you yourself as canvassers or even like your clients see you. So that’s from the sources of framing. So speaking of the old term, you are the sender, right? You are you are the one trying to to send this out. You’ve got to understand how you see it first, you know, from, the practitioner side, I would say this is how you do like internal research, right? I mean, it’s, it’s probably the same thing that you, it’s like you’re, try to debrief with your clients. And then next thing you need to know is that how people actually frame this thing right now. So you can take a look at the messages out there about the same thing and how other agencies, you know, how other actors, trying to frame this through, you know, the communication tools at last, but not least before you start designing, you gotta have to, see the frames of your target audience. So this part is tricky because most of the time, I said, Anna, when we do the PR research or even marketing research, we conveniently, we pretty much focus on that lifestyle, you know, like all those fancy words, like, customer journey and stuff, know, but I guess when it comes to, PR management issue, that stuff. need to know how they see this, what kind of frame they have toward this particular issue. So I just want to use another example and this is our pride of Thailand. We just got this card lion for the PR campaign called Let Her Grow. I’m not sure, you can also add on to it. Let Her Grow is doll campaign. Because here in Thailand, we have this like long time tradition on cutting hair. Like you have to have certain like hair tall, you know, to go to school. And this is a bit like forever, traditional conservative rules in school, right? So, from this, Adeleman, Adeleman is actually PR company apparently, right? So they try to figure like, you know, if you want to talk about hair, you want to talk about beauty. Here in Thailand, you know, like most of, most of the campaign would focus on like real beauty and true beauty, right? But here in Thailand, we actually still need to fight for our beauty. So they came up with this campaign. They just, they buy one big newspaper page, like, you know, and they say, you know, let her grow. then one like a portrait, a young girl, we heard uniform, Thai uniform, Thai student uniform, you know.focus on the message that because everybody knows that okay, length of hair doesn’t mean anything, right? But it’s still there. So they kind of like frame the way we look at these beauty, you know, these simple story, which fits into the frame of Thai women. You see what I mean? So it’s important to know like, even you’ve got this global global campaign, from, of course, from very big company, right? Even you’ve got this kind of like brief from your, your headquarter. We need to talk about this true beauty. need to talk about equal diversity, diverse beauty, whatever. But here in Thailand, we, we still struggle with these kind of like, you know, in school, these conservative rules. So I guess that’s the main, that’s the main, benefits of framing. Frames, you know, like you got to understand for when we talk about frames of the headquarter, what is it that they want to talk about the beauty, whatever beauty stand out. it’s beauty stand out. Right. And then we tie culture, we tie target audience. And it’s so interesting that it won the international award. And it’s so interesting that some of the school changed their rules accordingly. You know, after that big campaign, people came out to agree on this and even some schools resonate to this by, you know, just reject or just cancel these rules, you know. So it’s interesting that the framing process is very important because you’ve got to fit that to make an impact, know. It’s interesting that you talk about the framing process, right?
Ana Adi
Whenever I hear the word process, I think of something that is spread over time. Right. So in this case, if you talk about framing process, and it’s interesting that one of the other things that you’ve mentioned, you said, you know, what are the messages out there? How do people see this? So what I take from our conversation in your examples, there are two things. One is that framing is very much working as a theory. into the perception realm. That’s what I understand. So they are very, very, well, not necessarily qualitative, but rather subjective. So Walter Lippmann’s sort of the world in our heads is not necessarily the same with the world in somebody else’s head. So that though makes it quite fit in a sense with PR’s work, because reputation, again, is something in other people’s heads is nothing that we work on, right? But what’s interesting from what you’re saying is that unlike reputation that we, at least in my view, we cannot manage, right? Because if it’s in somebody else’s people heads, unless you can get in there and do things, you know, it’s not a direct transition, but with frames, you bring them into a process of the into a marketplace of sorts, right? You bring them into a debate. So they, these images start to metaphorically, speak to one another, either compete with one another. And so this is why when you say process, there’s there’s time for me. And so then you have different sorts of frames, right? You’ve mentioned dove in this case, pictures, they’re mental pictures, they’re words, not necessarily pictures, pictures, right? Until we get to put in the pictures, it’s still pictures in our heads that we need to use words to get there. But I think if that’s the case, if I were a communication practitioner, I would try to think that there are sort of different sorts of frames. In this case, you mentioned diversity and inclusion, right? So we talk about beauty standards. This is a very, very big frame, but that is culturally dependent, right? So then what you’ve done, you brought cultural specificity to something that might be, you know, unifying as a concept throughout. We talk about beauty in many different countries. Exactly. But we hold this beautiful, what we see as beautiful is a life either socially constructed or culturally dependent. And that’s why you’ve managed to underpin. The challenge, though, I think, for communication practitioners is not necessarily how do you set the frame.
It’s clear that I want this to be good. I want this to be bad. I want this to be an opposition to something. I think that the bigger challenge of communicators is to prove that those frames have been set. Exactly. That’s why the… You’re doing this sort of argument. How do you do it? Yeah. So I guess, that’s also the part where I want to say the effectiveness of your works. We know all these… like terms like outputs, outcome and impact. And that’s what, this is like a lecture, but my point here is that with the output, can just set the frame as you say, it’s exactly what you just say. Like, you know, it’s about, already know, you want to put the values on things and you just, you know, lay it out as an output. But as an outcome, of course, long -term, short -term is different because different issues need different times, right? For people to absorb.
In the case of beauty standard, I guess because the time is already like we’ve been, because we’ve been fighting this in a very, in a very different ways, you know. So when the time is written, I guess the outcome is strong enough for us to see. When we talk about PR executions, we cannot really count it as sales or, you know,
Ana Adi (23:50.21)
But I guess we can see it from the support, right? I mean, the support here can be shown as like virtually like from online platforms or even for this case, as I said, like some policy has been changed, you know, and as impact, of course, not when we talk about how this framing works, you can also find different ways to check whether people go along with your ideas, you know. And as I said, with the impact, for, for, for some issues, may take, take some times. cause I also work on another project. I talk about cannabis? You are fighting like with the cannabis, know, you are not fighting, but you are trying to set this frame. You know, in their head about the positioning of cannabis, the weeds, know, cause when we talk about weed, the teenagers, they look at it as something cool, know, like, we can do it here, like, you know, be cool. But in fact, we really want to tell them like, that’s not how you should frame it. But you know, they already think about it this way. You cannot just use the frames of, you know, authority to say, hey, don’t think about it this way. You see, you have to find the frames to fit that. frame to make this that framing happen. Right. And yeah, but, when it comes to effectiveness, what we, we, we are working on this is that we’re going to have this school roadshow and hoping that this can be one way to check our successful successful rate of framing, because what we will do, we will ask them to tell us about what they think about cannabis. And then we create these chart films together with some activities. And afterwards we will check, you know, how, how, how they think about cannabis differently or not. So I guess in a short time, can do that kind of thing, you know, but in a long term, I guess you have to like see a bigger picture, like, you know, probably in the policy level or even like, in a lifestyle level where it takes some time as well. But I guess the key word for framing in campaigns to work in consistency, like from source to message to target audience. Yeah. If it’s consistent, then, you know, it’s somehow show the good success.
Ana Adi
I wonder how, how can we, as communicators, how can we measure and assess this consistency considering that there’s so many channels out there, so many platforms, you know, that there’s increased fragmentation and division when it comes to what sorts of, not only media we consume, but the choices that we make in terms of the media that we interact and engage with. So, as a communicator and a researcher, how do you assess that consistency? Okay, that’s a very… Interesting questions because we just saw these news about how Facebook algorithms manipulate and play around. But I guess it always comes back to your objectives and your audience. As with PR work, we always work by objectives. So you’ve got to go back to see what you said as your goal here. Of course, I will be honest to you, one campaign might not change the world. That’s ridiculous. At least within these certain campaign or within these effort of communication, what you want to see from your team. And from that, when it comes to evaluation, I guess we can do these two ways. First, like measure it with something we can do it like quantitatively, you know, with numbers, know, when we do this all the time, we do this engagement rate, you know, that kind of stuff this might be like, you know, idealistic, but I think you can also try to check this out from the feeling like how people talk about it, how people react to it. Like, you know, it doesn’t have to be online. I mean, simply if you like for my case, I’m working on cannabis campaign. If I want to check, probably like, you know, just ask randomly, ask some of my kids, friends, you know, think about it and see whether it.
Ne
We go that far, that much as you want. guess from PR professional, you already have this set of evaluation, but I guess what you can do more is to see the vides around. as I said, the beauty standard or let her grow campaign of dope, during that time when they launched this particular campaign, like the whole, it’s like, the whole Thai netizens, every Thai netizen are like talking about this. Even when you come to class or you go to the shop, to the markets, people are talking about this. you know about, you see that like the girl cut her hair and stuff. So I guess you can also check it from the, the vibes and from the lay conversations, you know, to see whether it goes consistent with what you’re trying to say.
Ana Adi
You’re still measuring PR value and PR value of appliances in Thailand? Yeah, but they still do it as a tradition, you know, because it’s something that, yeah, but it doesn’t really work that way, of course, but you know, some clients still need it. Okay, I guess one of our previous guests will not be particularly pleased about that. Yeah, I know. Even like some of my friends here are like… would be angry if I started taking off your value. But let’s go back a little bit because I mean, when you talk about consistency, that means you speak about messages, right? And messages, they’re not always in campaigns, particularly those that want to, one has to think differently. Let’s say not necessarily change, rather particularly those campaigns where we want to encourage others to think differently about social issues. You’re not necessarily using only jingles and slogans, know, one sentence slogans. You’re using different words, right? I mean, if it would be one phrase, like we’ve had earlier, climate change and global warming, those probably would be fairly easy to be picked up quantitatively, right? I mean, we can… Scrape data online, can put alerts and see quantitatively how often this is mentioned versus the other. We can look within a text to see how often one versus the other. And we can equally ask people. So this is what you mentioned with quantitative research. So you can do call, un -added recall or aided recall sort of tests where you see if people remembered seeing or they’re using your words but how do we know when thinking even now with beauty standards where there might be more companies and organizations wanting to talk openly about and challenge and make us reflect about beauty standards, how do we know it’s us? When you mention all those elements ike slogans, catch phrases, visual images stuff. It’s part of these framing tools, you know, you still need this to, you still need this to create the frames. Cause when I say, cause I already mentioned this, when we talk about this framing process, not only do we try to make them remember, right? Just to remember about this, but we want them to somehow know how to judge this and we want them to judge this issue, you know, in our direction, right? So I guess with that, we always put value. And of course, when we check, we not only checking whether they think about it, but how they think about it. So we want to know like the, even whether it’s minus or plus, right? So just put it simple that way.
Ne
Of course, to be, to be like, you know, to be realistic is that communication is not like one -on -one anymore. Like, it’s not like, you know, you put one thing and then the, but we can hope that, what we try to frame and put it in their heads will be something that, will also like, reflect the way they think about anything else, you know, so when we talk about framing as I say, not, it’s not probably just for example, when I say, okay, the beauty standard, I should say, right. when we talk about beauty standard, in one country may, may, may, portrayed from the different generations, but here in Thailand, we, we portrayed from this, school roles of cutting hair. And from that, I guess from the framing process to make it work.
It’s not that we want them to remember that cat has, but we want them to how to put it, install these frames of how you see beauty standard, you know, right. And this is this visual image and messages try to set up the way they think about it and how they should put value into this matter. So, with beauty standard in some country might say, you know, doesn’t matter what your age is, you are all beautiful. But here in Thailand, we just want to say that the beauty center cannot, you know, cannot be what you call it controlled. Like the freedom is a beauty standard, you know what I mean? So it’s not exactly like the picture of that girls are even like the words are not exactly what we try to have them remember. But it’s something that a part of this framing process. It’s an element that, what you call it, like, provoke, you know, how they think about this. So it has to be somehow interesting with it, right, to have them look at it. But somehow it should also like encourage them to think more about this in the way you want them to. So in that case, I guess, to see whether it’s t’s working or not in that head. I guess you still have to come back to see like how they react or you know, those simple tools might work. But in the long run, as I said, you know, if I should say as well as Anna said, like, the timing is like the time of framing is very important as well, because you might not see this this year. But if you are running another campaign, right, within the same story,
Ana Adi (35:42.508)
And then even the visuals are different, catch phrases are different, but what you try to install into the heads is same thing. I guess you will get even like stronger, even like more feedback from them. That’s how I see the power framing. Right. So it’s interesting. mean, going back to time, what I’ve learned from what you’re saying is that repeated exposure is key in this case, right? So it’s not only this means that repetition before repeated exposure. So that means that we’re looking when we talk about framing about very similar images, right? And that means images as in pictures, as in, know, compositions. In this case, we can talk about sounds, we can talk about moods in films. But more particularly, we’re looking for constructs, So words, metaphors, epithets that are synonymous and proxies, right? So I think the challenge, if go back to your previous example of global warming and climate change was in clarifying, in a sense, the effect and what that meant, right? Many people thought that in a sense that the same thing, we’re acknowledging, you know, a change, which is why, you know, long time, I mean, you talk about doing your PhD 10 years ago, we’re now talking about the climate crisis, which from a framing perspective is conjuring in our heads a different level of urgency. It’s very different in a sense, in way I hear it, right? We talk about pictures in our heads, I hear it as you know, way more dire with much stronger effects than either change or warming, right? It’s more impactful. So to summarize a little bit, you’re saying there is a process. It takes time. Not only that takes time, it takes stamina. This means, I mean, this is what you said, you know, maybe this year’s campaign is not working, but you have another campaign and another campaign.which points out to comms meeting to think long -term about this. not in, I call campaign hiccups. My students know this, right? is just evaluating campaign. It’s like evaluating a life’s hiccup. And then you kind of wonder, you know, why isn’t life successful? Well, because you don’t live in a hiccup. So it’s everything in that and in and there are ways that you can measure this, right? You’ve mentioned already these particular keywords that are related to the messaging, to the positioning of the organization and how you associate that. Let me take you back to your study on NoDamn because what was really interesting about that, as far as I remember, was that that had a social media driven component and there was a hashtag associated with it.
Right? mean, one of the key elements in remembering that was the heart. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? So how is social media then playing such an important role in framing and carrying it through?
Yeah, because it helps to, it helps to say like, fast forward the framing process, because basically this guy, he started his walk, from Man Wom province, which is a, you know, yeah, very, I don’t remember exact number of kilometers, but it’s very far from Bangkok. If you walk, it takes about a month to walk, you know. So the role of the social media is that it somehow helps him to create this frame easier in the minds of younger generation. Because when we talk about that construction, it’s like, you know. We heard about it all the time. we have to like protest this. But as a people in Bangkok, for example, it’s so far from us that we cannot really see how can that happen? You know, how can we stop that? well, to be to be honest, I guess some kids here, don’t even even know like, why do we have to stop them? Because it should, you know, that way. So I guess social media helps to visualize thonce again like kind of frame like help to frame how you should think about this, how you should think about this. Even they use the word no damn, as I said once again like all these constructs, all these elements are not what we try to have them remember but what we try to do is that when you see the word no damn, creating a damn is the negative. That’s what we try to like that’s what we try to create you know that’s how the framing works you know. Like when they see this message, they would, they would have to interpret that. so create like constructing a dab is not a good thing. All right. And that’s, that’s the point of doing all the, that’s the point of framing theories that not only do you tell them what to think about, but how to think about it. This is not a good thing. Right. So from that social media plus influencer. It’s so interesting because, he started on his own, I would say his own page on his own, right? And then suddenly one of the very like famous celebrity, you know, the mask, she’s, she’s like a superstar, you know, she picked up this and retweeted it in her Twitter back then. I think this case is about six, seven years ago, you know, like I did this after my PhD, right? So around, so Twitter was still very powerful for political message at that time.
But plus this popularity, we still have to admit that most people want to see something beautiful and fancy. So when this lady, the superstar picked up this message, everyone turned to her and then everyone started to follow this guy who was fighting for this damn construction. another element that is interesting is that he did something that most of the process would do like starving, like this kid’s walking. Like most of us, would say, it’s a traditional way of doing it. But when you put it into a Twitter platform, it looks more fancy in a sense. those young generation, know, like, because in the past, when we talk about in Thailand, we call it like, protesters, know, like, sometimes people don’t feel like, you just like complain about everything. when, when we, we somehow put him his picture, like him walking. And then we put it on Twitter platform. It’s totally make a change, right? mean, seven years ago. So, I guess the media helped to like make it faster and also make it wider in that sense. Right. I mean, let the message out, even stronger and wider. And at that time it turned out that he ended his walk here. Yeah, right here, actually very close to my office. It’s called the Arts Center. And like, they have to like close the road that they because so many participants joined him. And speaking of how to evaluate it, I guess this is very simple. Like, you know, you have people to support you. I mean, so I mean, online as well as offline. That’s, that’s good enough, right? Yeah. So yeah, I from from that particular piece of work, guess, the whole thing is that he tried to set up how you should think about these dam construction protests and what you can do. That’s always a part of our PR job. What I don’t recall is whether the dam was built in the end or not. It’s still not, you know, it’s so interesting because the other day, someone asked me about this. It’s still on hold. Even like with the new government, you know, because this is from last government, like previous studies, seven, eight years ago before the coup, know, when the coup in charge, they still hold that, you know, project. So it’s interesting, right? We still remember the hashtag. We still remember the importance of in this case, mediators and influencers are also media to a degree. One thing real quick is that he actually got at that time, he wants to do the live, the Facebook. It was like, but it turned out and one TV channel, it’s national TV channel, you know, once you broadcast it and they got these. They got this order not to broadcast it. And it’s even interesting because once you say no, right, they didn’t online. Instead, it turned out that, they got like hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, know, almost million people to follow his walk from social media platforms. Doesn’t it worry you that framing can be misused? I mean, there’s such a great to get an hour away, know, or somebody else’s way. When, when isn’t this not okay to do this anymore? Is there any time? I wouldn’t say it’s not a matter of time, but it’s a matter of issue. And it’s interesting that you talked about this because Pride Month is actually June is Pride Month, right?
And here in Thailand, it turned out that the conversation goes very far to the point that they got backlash, you know, like the way they try to support this diversity became a threat to that one. If you not support this, then you know, like it’s no longer like, you know. So I guess when you try to, when you try to frame it to like, to say that if you try to do it from coercion way, not persuasive way, like you try to force, okay, I’ll use this one. When you try to force the frame in someone head, that wouldn’t The whole point is that you cannot force the frame, but you can create elements to help them to create the frames themselves. Yeah. So if you try too much, too fast to create the frame, that wouldn’t And I guess if you fast, then it will fall into another tool instead of like preservation and framing and stuff. Yeah. Right.
Ana Adi (47:33.93)
I have one more question before we say goodbye. is fascinating though, but you’ve studied in the US, you studied in Australia. How does the world of PR how did the world of PR look in Thailand when you returned? And how does it look now that you’ve been in Thailand for a while and, you know, making a successful career and teaching others? How does that go?
Ne
Okay. So now, well, I was in the US, in Australia, now I’m here in Thailand. So I would say I’ll start from my originality, like from Thailand case. And I think it’s interesting because I talked about those campaign, right? But that’s only one campaign out of like thousands of campaign that always see PR as like, my natural tools, you know, like PR in a company or even for the government is like just a tool to like publicize something, some messages or, know, to, to create certain images or trying to, you know, maintain certain reputation. And in Thailand, it’s more like a routine job. And that’s why I think it’s going to be very interesting if we go on with this mess up with this research on P future PR here in Thailand. Cause I want to see, and again, after like 20, 20, 30 years of thinking of PR in this way, we, have to stop because it wouldn’t work. mean, people would, you know, would be able to, to, to realize that this is not how they do PR up there. So speaking of out there in the US, was in US like, 2000, you know, 2002, 2000. So it’s like 20 years ago, you know. Back then, I would say when I was in class learning about this PR job, it’s more like a professional standard. trying to, from my point of view, back then it was like, they’re trying to standardize the professions. Like that’s the things you have to do. For example, back then I had to come up with a campaign for merging company. At that time it was Disney and, and, HP, you know, it’s so long time ago, but anyway, my point is at that time, he has seems like, you have to follow certain things to complete your PR job, you know, like as a PR, as a person, you have to do this as a job, need to do this, kind of stuff. But in Australia, 10 years afterwards, have a chance to actually sit in class with a person who run this campaign Earth Hour, you know, and he’s actually from PR like communication agencies. And it’s interesting that in Sydney in Australia at the time, he said, PR is actually something, you know, you can do as a mechanism, something that you can use for a change. with his Earth Hour campaign, know,
He used that particular time. It’s very common. mean, it’s very typical way of doing campaign. You’ve got the right time to do certain thing, right? So he chose this kind of tactics from PR, from communication viewpoint to create this earth alley, turn off the light. And it turned out that, he sees this PR works to be very powerful that to the point where he thinks that if you use it in the right way, it can create some change.
That’s how I see PR from different views. Yeah. So how is it now that you’re back in Thailand? I mean, you said that it’s a routine. I guess when I come back to Thailand, that’s when I think we need to do more than just publicize, of course. And we go too far from publicize era already here in we’re still stuck to that. So we need to find some kind of way to, guess in the private sectors, they’re very fast on this. They’re part of this PRCA globally. They work with the multinational corporate, know, but from our government, I think we need to revisit how they see PR job and how the government themselves as the clients see how they should do the PR.
Ana Adi (52:26.316)
Interesting. Ne, thank you so very much. So we’ll take you back into the daily job and build it into both the insight measurement and evaluation process. I mean, it’s something ongoing. Isn’t it fun, you know, when you realize that the stuff that you do for a living, that people might think it’s academic actually has day to day applications. Yeah. And now that we talked about it, think it’s
Ne
Yeah, hope it’s useful for those listeners as well. Thank you so much, for having me today. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much. The thanks are on mine.