When a million screens light up

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra yesterday seemed to characterise the growing protest against the amnesty bill as a conspiracy against her administration. By claiming the protesters were aiming to “distort” or “create misunderstanding”, she appeared to overlook a crucial fact – that the anti-bill network is widespread and amplified by a powerful tool, the social media.

When the bill passed the third reading at 4am last Friday, many citizens were following the legislative manoeuvring via the social networks. Reaction and interpretation quickly followed, and the word spread that the blanket amnesty, if passed, would help restore part of the fortune seized from former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra by court order in 2010. The news reawakened anti-Thaksin sentiment and sparked anger among some pro-government red shirts, who have different reasons for opposing a broad amnesty.

Facebook, Thais’ favourite social network, was the first stop for people seeking to vent frustration. With 24 million users, it quickly became a hotbed of activism. Many users have changed their profile picture in protest, while “walls” are filled with anti-amnesty messages. 

Photo-sharing site Instagram has seen a similar influx of protests against the bill. The same goes for Thailand’s two million Twitter users and the 18 million who chat via the Line app, where conversation is dominated by a growing sentiment of opposition.

Using the social media to air public issues is, of course, not a new phenomenon. In Thailand they were heavily utilised for breaking news and relief campaigns during the 2011 flooding. More recently they boosted a campaign against the proposed Mae Wong Dam in Nakhon Sawan, drawing together people at home and abroad to pressure the government over an issue to which the mainstream media gave scant attention. 

But the anti-amnesty campaign marks the first time the full force of the social media has been mobilised against Thaksin. In contrast, campaigns to oust him in 2005 and 2006 relied heavily on yellow-shirt media outlets like ASTV and the newspaper ASTV Manager. And while the yellow shirts took plenty of photographs at their demonstrations, they didn’t share them with a vast network of “friends”, as they would be now.

The platform for activism has changed dramatically since then. Today more than 25 million have access to the Internet and a third of the Thai population uses the social media. There is more than one cell-phone per citizen in Thailand, with 16 million using mobile devices to access Facebook. These data graphically explain how and why the anti-amnesty campaign has grown so rapidly. 

If earlier technology created 1992’s “mobile-phone mob” protest, how much more effective as campaign tools will today’s social-media-enabled smart phones be? Gone are the days when you had to wait hours for news – now it leaps in seconds to your mobile screen. Mobilising protesters against the bill is simple, fast and effective. Just one person at a rally can spread the word to hundreds of others – or even thousands if that person is a celebrity or opinion leader. 

Advocates of the amnesty bill face a new and powerful weapon, and they cannot afford to ignore it.