An analysis of representations from advertisements in contemporary Thai lifestyle magazines

Abstract

This thesis advances a theoretically-informed cultural critique of consumer-based representations in contemporary Thai lifestyle media, through a qualitative case study of visual imagery featured in Thai lifestyle magazines. The thesis analyzes how this imagery is informed by class-based ideologies of social distinction operative in contemporary Thai culture. Using semiotic textual analysis as its principal critical approach, supplemented with theoretical material drawn from economics, history, cultural studies and sociology, the thesis develops a qualitative analytic exploration of three representative lifestyle magazines that were issued in the Thai market during the 2011 calendar year. The three magazines used for the case study are: Baan Lae Suan (House and Garden), Puen Dern Tang (Traveler’s Companion), and HiSo Party. These magazines were chosen as representative examples of the expansive lifestyle magazine market in Thailand today. A range of image-based advertisements, articles and editorials were selected from the magazines as primary data to illustrate the major themes explored in the thesis and substantiate its central claims. The research reveals that Thai lifestyle media is invested in promoting and normalizing class-based forms of conspicuous consumption and the broader formations of social distinction on which these rest. Specifically the research illustrates that contemporary Thai consumer culture idealizes certain commodities, spaces and consumer-based practices which are invested in and reflective of contextual changes in a rapidly modernizing Thai culture and society. In relation to commodities, the thesis found that Thai lifestyle magazines valorize fashion, technology and whitening cosmetics. In terms of spaces, it shows how these magazines privilege select sites of urban residential spatiality such as townhouses and condominiums and, additionally, inflect these and other domestic spaces with strong gendered dynamics. The final analysis in this thesis shows that the consumerist practices of food, dining and travel also possess socially distinct values as part of a broader ideological discourse of Thai cosmopolitan modernity.