Chapter 7
Mindful Communication and Journalism
from a Thai Buddhist Perspective
Abstract From a Buddhist perspective, social change needs transformation of both
spiritual and personal aspect. Mindful communication is a methodology to a critical
self-reflexivity and social engagement. It is to help us cope with greed, anger, and
delusion. For the mass media and the media industry, delusion deems to be
addressed for both media practitioners and corporations. Being mindful is being
addressed in this chapter. Anyone, not only journalists, should benefit from
mindfulness understanding and practice.
7.1 Introduction.........................................
Digital literacy is what being discussed as the utmost necessary characteristics of a
postmodern individual. It captures the ability to effectively use computer applica-
tions, video and internet tools to communicate and use information for individual
and social purposes. Positive use of digital media is discussed as important for
lifelong learning, economic productivity, and democratic engagement (Wilhelm
2004 : 117), and negative use of digital media as for increasing greed, anger, and
delusion (Loy 2008 :92–93). Loy ( 2008 ) discusses in detail how media corporations
maximize their profits by using advertisements to entice consumerism and distort
the worldview of consumers to believe that personal image and worth are judged by
the ability to consume, not mention about the ability to aware of social injustice and
engage in social responsibility. Loy calls the role of the media as institutionalized
delusion. The process of delusion can be called mediatization. It is a process
whereby culture and society are increasingly dependent on the media and their logic
in such a way that the degree of the social interactions within a given culture and
society modulated by the media capital can be observed within social institutions,
between institutions, or in a society (Hjarvard 2013 : 17). Spurred by communica-
tion technology in the few last years of the twenty-first century as one of many
factors, mediatization is seen as a part of globalization characterizes the postmodern
culture industry. Print media, electronic media, and new media including social
media are our cultural products that we create and share.
©Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017
P. Malikhao,Culture and Communication in Thailand, Communication,
Culture and Change in Asia 3, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4125-9_7
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