Creating Citizen Youth Journalists for the ASEAN Community

Abstract

Thailand entered the ASEAN Community in 2015, yet Thai citizens are ill prepared to benefit from this next step of regionalization. The aim of this research was it to find a best practice model that can be successfully employed to increase the Thai youth’s readiness for the ASEAN Community. To achieve this, we employed an action study. During a two day interactive workshop 70 youth from the Eastern region of Thailand were instructed in different issues concerning ASEAN and equipped with journalistic skills. By applying themselves as citizen youth journalists it was hoped that the workshop participants could disseminate knowledge about ASEAN well beyond their own group. With a questionnaire survey it could be shown that the participants had increased their knowledge about ASEAN. Two years after the workshop had been conducted follow-up interviews with a number of participants took place. This showed that many of them remained active citizens or even professional journalists. They actively engaged with their communities to spread information about ASEAN. The goals of this research have been achieved and we recommend the model presented here as best practice that can be applied in other localities.