Thailand Magazines

[Billie Kjergaard]

Magazinesformed a major component of the Thai publishing industry in 20th century. Printed Thai-language serial publications began with The Bangkok Recorder in 1844, but it wasn't until after the abolition of absolute monarchy in 1932 that a distinct genre of magazines, as opposed to newspapers, began to form, prominently featuring fiction and lifestyle-related content. Magazine publishing experienced a boom in the late 20th century and the 2000s, diversifying into many niche titles, numbering over 400 at its peak. However, they sharply declined as a result of digital disruption in the 2010s, and many have since either converted to online-only or ceased publication entirely.[1][2]

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Print Newspapers & Magazines encompass the traditional form of publishing news and periodicals in physical, tangible formats such as newspapers and magazines. This market involves the production, distribution, and consumption of printed content, including articles, photographs, and advertisements, typically delivered through daily or periodical publications.

The Print Newspapers & Magazines market comprises various components, including newspapers and magazines, which deliver news, articles, and other content in printed formats. Additionally, it encompasses advertising space within print newspapers and magazines, serving as a vital platform for businesses to promote their products and services to readers.

The market comprises revenues, ad spendings, users, average revenue per user, and penetration rates. Revenues are generated through subscriptions and purchases. Key players in the market are companies, such as The New York Times Company, Gannett Co., Inc., and Hearst Communications, Inc.

This research on the portrayal of women in Thai travel narratives aims to analyze the structure and components of these narratives and examines the language strategies used to present the images of Thai women within the context of travel magazines by combining textual analysis with visual methodology. Altogether 313 narratives from 48 issues of Vacationist, Travel around the World, Neekrung and Osotho magazines published between June 2018 and May 2019 were collected. The study reveals that the meanings of travel and the images of Thai women in the travel magazines through the use of language strategies are formed in a positive way. Solo female travelers are depicted as adventurers, nature lovers and soul searchers. These images indicate individuality and financial independence. On the other hand, female travelers with companions are displayed in association with their roles as wives, mothers and daughters.

In addition to the photos of the journey in the introduction, Neekrung, Osotho, Travel around the World and Vacationist illustrate certain major types of tourism: outbound and domestic tourism. The outbound tourism in the magazines in this study refers to Thai residents travelling outside Thailand to a different country, whereas the domestic tourism points to Thai women taking trips in Thailand. The story titles in relation to both outbound and domestic tourism are formed on the basis of the purpose of the travel; namely, leisure travel. Leisure travel includes travel for holidays, historical and cultural events, adventure and recreation.

Typically, the companions of female travelers are their friends and families. When women travel with their friends, they normally do activities together during their trips in order to gain new experiences. The women in the magazines have new experiences for example by exploring new cultures; these women and their friends are portrayed as cultural tourists visiting places that are relevant to their interests in Thailand and abroad. Occasionally, women as cultural tourists are depicted in national or folk costumes. On the one hand, wearing these costumes is connected with cultural traditions, heritage, and pride, and on the other hand, these women are considered to be cultural representatives.

In this issue of Expedition, designed to be some small tribute to Froelich Rainey for his many years of inspired leadership as director of the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, we have the special privilege of publishing three articles dealing with recent archaeological work in northeastern Thailand, especially with material from the sites of Non Nok Tha and Ban Chiang. The cooperative arrangement under which this work is being conducted is described in the article by Chester Gorman and Pisit Charoenwongsa. The purpose of this brief editorial note is to introduce the reader to the historical questions raised by the discoveries in Thailand and to give some indication why the University Museum attaches such importance to its present work there.

It is not often that archaeological discoveries are described in feature stories in major newspapers and magazines around the country. Yet, for the past year, the finds from Ban Chiang have been discussed in articles appearing in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek and Time. All of these articles have repeated the same basic claim, that the finds from Ban Chiang provide the earliest bronze yet discovered and suggest that the Bronze Age might have first begun in Southeast Asia. The reader might well ask, so what? Who cares about the Bronze Age anyway!

So pervasive was this point of view that, when the excavations by the Academia Sinica at the site of Anyang in the northern part of Honan province, China, first revealed the rich bronze metallurgy of the Shang Dynasty (c 1600-1027 B.C.), it was assumed by scholars working on the material that bronze metallurgy could not have had an independent origin in China but must have been brought in from the outside. In spite of the very special nature of Chinese bronze metallurgy, seemingly derived from the art of the potter and using a unique technique of piece-mould casting, it was felt that the basic technology of making and casting bronze must have developed somewhere outside of China, perhaps in the Ancient Near East. There were two basic reasons for accepting this argument:

China was important for it was also held that, once bronze metallurgy developed there, it spread from China to other parts of the East. This meant that bronze metallurgy came to Thailand no earlier than the early first millennium B.C. Compare this to the date of c. 3600 B.C. now proposed for a bronze spearhead from Ban Chiang and you have some idea of the magnitude of the challenge to traditional theory now underway.

At the same time, students of ancient Chinese metallurgy now place great emphasis upon the independent invention of metallurgy in China itself. Recent studies have been totally opposed to any possibility of diffusion or borrowing from outside China, be it from western Asia or even Thailand. China had its own sources of copper and tin, and a country that invented gunpowder, the compass and the art of printing was quite capable of developing its own metallurgy. So the argument goes, and all indications are that we are in for a lively discussion in the years ahead.

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