Exposure to the Move Forward Party’s Political Communication, Attitude Homophily, Voters’ Perceived Political Ideology, and 2023 Thailand General Election Decision: Comparing Four Thai Generations
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Abstract
Due to the growing popularity of the Move Forward Party (MFP) during the past few years, this research aims to discover the causal relationship between its political communication, the attitude homophily, the perceived political ideology of Thai voters, and their 2023 general election decision. This study used a mixed-method approach, a combination of textual analysis and a survey. In the first phase, 20 contents in the MFP’s Facebook and Twitter accounts with the highest engagements between March 1st, 2021, and August 31st, 2022 were textually analyzed. The analysis results showed the majority of message themes that occurred in the MFP’s political communication represented Libertarian-Left political ideology based on the Political Compass diagram which aligned with the party’s political ideology. In the second phase, an online survey was conducted with 240 Thai voters to test three research hypotheses. The results of data analyses revealed that Thai voters of four different generations have different perceived political ideologies and made their voting decisions differently such that younger generations with Libertarian-Left ideology voted for the MFP whereas the older generations with the Authoritarian-Right ideology voted for other parties.
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