Construction and Implications of Cannabis Discourse in Thailand’s Cannabis Legalization: A Comparative Study of English-language Traditional and New Media

Abstract

Although news reports about cannabis legalization in Thailand were published on medical cannabis, several different discourses appeared on the legalization within traditional and new media sources. Consequently, the purpose of this research is to examine how English-language texts in both newspaper reports and social media posts were constructed linguistically to either support or oppose the legalization of cannabis in Thailand found in both newspaper reports and on social media posts. This study used qualitative research in the form of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as the main theoretical framework in which texts were analyzed using a linguistic analysis tool. The finding suggests that cannabis discourse has been constructed around it being an economic crop, a national property protected for only Thais, a benefit to patients, a traditional medicine, and a commodity to be normalized within the pro-movement sources. These include both the Bangkok Post Newspaper and the Highland Network Page, within which the discourses are related to economic, social, cultural, political, and scientific dimensions. Regarding the representation of cannibis as a traditional medicine, there existsan outstanding discourse in the Thai context, which had rarely been found in previous studies. However, the Highland Network Page tends to provide only the positive side of cannabis and cannabis legalization. Although the negative implications of cannabis were mostly found in the Bangkok Post, anti-movement content was not explicitly reported. The construction of cannabis discourse also reveals the movement of social actors. These include patients and activists campaigning against hegemony, farmers in an unfair economic system, healthcare system problems, and stigmatized cannabis users in Thailand.