 Recording in progress. So I think this is the last session, but it's a very highlight one. And I'm going to be using both languages, switch back and forth. So this session is digital campaigning and political finance, the Thailand story. And we have an honor to have our speakers today with us three people. The first one on my right, Mr. Warwood Bunmad. He's currently the deputy election manager. Move forward, party. And the beautiful lady on my right, she's assistant professor, Surachini CEI. She's currently the lecturer at the Chiang Mai University and she works on the digital governance track, right? And the last one, very interesting. We have a very mixed diverse group. We have the civil society from WeWatch, Mr. Wahsin Pongkau. He's currently the manager of social media monitoring project WeWatch. And I myself, Pisa Wai-Chunke from Narasun University, faculty of social sciences. I think Thai people are more than Thai people. Thai people are more than Thai people, right? But some of them may be from the UK because it's a concept that I don't know what Thai people are. I'd like to add one more thing. Thank you, International IDEA. It's extremely important. At present election on the 14th of May, you can see that there are a lot of digital campaigning and that has been used extensively in canvassing votes. What is important is that if we do use digital platform for campaigning, let me not mention about whether the information is misinformation or disinformation or not, but just simply looking at the, if it affects electoral outcome, this is something that people should focus on and take an interest in. The second point that I want the participants of this panel as well as the audience to be thinking about is that if there can be important effects of the electoral outcome, how should we regulate the using whatever framework is required for digital platform, how should we do it? But first of all, I would like to have everyone please take a look from another point of view, which is not top down. What we have been listening to this morning about political finance, talking about digital campaigning and now it is a case of the Thailand story. There is one thing that is extremely interesting is that we are actually looking from the top down. I would like to propose for you to look from the bottom upwards. The question I would like to pose is that if you're looking from the top down or down to the top, from the bottom to the top, what does that mean? If you're looking at political finance, whether it's a framework law or it's campaign finance or digital campaign finance, it is like a tree. You have to analyze everything in a larger context, which is of greater things, which means you have to look at the forest that the tree is in as well. What is the forest? It is the states, it's the state agencies, whether it is an independent unit like the ECT or the Constitution Court or the NACC. Now, you are trying to regulate the political parties. And to think how you can control the capital of these political parties and if it's digital, how you could regulate it. But if you look at it from this point of view, the relationship between the party finance and the relationship between party finance, between the various parties and the people and the state, what you have to look at those two. You can see clearly that in the past few years, 20 years ago, when we started democratization process, it is a struggle between the people on the left and the political parties in the middle. And to the right, it is a group of elite powers who want to maintain their authority. Now, so whatever you're talking about, about this tree, about the party finance, digital campaigning, blah, blah, blah, these are parts of the tree. But if you're talking about the forest, you have to look at the components and the structure and the factors that affect each and every component. So if you look at the bottom up process in terms of the campaign finance on the digital platform, the people or the public can actually come in and assist the parties. Now, if you compare to other countries, most other countries, the problem that may arise from the talk of war is between the private group and the party. But no, it is the political part in Thailand. It's the political party fighting with the government agencies that are regulating them. So in terms of party finance or digital platform, it is a struggle against the state who are trying to do a QA control, quality assurance control. So that is why I would like to propose that when you look at the problem, don't look at it from top down only. Not just limiting the parties, not just limiting the capital, the donations, or even if you are using the digital platform, you have to tell the parties that you can do this or you can not do that. You really have to look at the relationship between the parties and the people as well, not just simply looking at the state's point of view. This is the first thing I would like to propose. And I think our panel today who is looking at the Thailand story would have a lot of things to provide to you. Please open up your mind and to try and look the parties, the academicians. How are they looking at this? So I would like to propose the point of view. So take a look at everything bottom up. Thank you. Let me ask you a question. OK. Thank you. My name is... I am the director for the move forward party in the past elections. So the deputy election managers. So before we talk, there's a question from the organizer asking me that a move forward party is what kind of strategy for the online campaigning. And I know that before we have this strategy, not to see the limitations of the party first. And we have to see that the problems are the challenges in the political arena. What are they? Of course, the first limitations of the move forward party is money. Because our money, we don't have like 100 million dollars or so. There are 1,000 million dollars. No, it's a no. So how do we campaign so that we can spend our money with the most cost effectiveness? At the least money spent possible. And it would bring us to the way that we campaign. So what kind of approach are we going to use? And secondly, the political challenges at that time, the Thai society's current status and directions both for the political problems and also regarding the livelihood of the people. Are they still living their life in the 1990s? Or do they live their life on a social media platform? So we need to really deliberate on these questions first. And that would bring us to finally for the move forward party, we would decide on using the tools available in this world to campaign for our policies for the elections. So we already see the landscape, the scenario. And we decide that the social media is a very important tool, the mechanism, because first, it's required a minimum amount of money, very low cost. And secondly, it has such a broad reach to the people. But we have to also understand the limitation, the constraint of social media platform. Let me say that if it be voiced out that Instagram is also a social media platform in the S&S, but how many Thai people use Instagram or Facebook is also a social media platform. But the algorithm or the directions of the data process of Facebook has been blocked. There's a block of less visibility of your posts. So we have to know the social media tools on how to use it wisely. Of course, to be straightforward, move forward party, we have been accused extensively that we hired an agency, make an agency, or we hired an IO, information operations. We hired two people to work as IO. I can guarantee that you can look at us that way, but in truth, I stand firm and I guarantee that. And I can disclose this, that as someone who is involved in the social media activity, these are my generations. There's only 10 of us. But why can we generate the information that has such a broad reach? So that's the problem and the causes that we deliberate on the political landscape. And we figure out the needs of the people. That's why I would like to reaffirm again that even though the political party, A, B, C, D, have such a large amount of financial resources, can hire a big powerhouse company. But if the content is something that the people refute, they would not digest it. They would not want it. Even though you have good tools, but the content sucks. It cannot continue. That's why we need to really find out the answer from the challenges that you face. So I might have to refer some political party, but I hope that people will understand my intentions. Do you think that the Ruan-Thai-Sang-Chart or Palang-Chara parties, what kind of financial clout do they have? How much money do they have? We know they have large resources in the financial sector, but why do social media use is ineffective? This is just the example. But I would like to be honest with you as well. Using social media platform, yes, it is low cost, and that is a strength. And also it could distribute the information quickly and very fast. But the problem is that the social media platform, it would cost the status that it's like an echo chamber. Like Facebook, for example. If you click on one post, Facebook would run its algorithm repeatedly again and again. That is the clearest example you see in the US. The one who pro-Trump. You will always see a content that's pro-Trump only. But those who are pro-democrats of others, you will just get the same kind of information feeding into you again. So coming back to the forward party, we all aware that. If we could make this a set of information, be online, it would just be circulated now only, maybe only 100,000 people seeing it repeatedly again. So how do we do so that we can ensure the information would be generated publicly outside of this echo chamber for real? I would like to give you this example. You would see that. This is the accumulation of the information about the political party that used to spend money for their ads, political advertising. You see, million parties use 1.5 million. A room-tie sign says 437,000. Who are tied 130,000? The count line is at the lowest one, zero bar. And you're just like, what? Are you lying? My answer is that this is the truth and the only truth. But it doesn't mean that we just, you know, zero bar. We have confidence in it. But yes, we prepare a budget for the ad. But I would like to use the word, our success come quicker than we thought when we expected. At the beginning, we post the content that we want to generate. But it happened to be that the direction that we thought just come at the right moment. The people, they repeatedly reproduce the content. It's a UCG, user-generated content. That's why it's not necessary for us to pay for the ad at all. And a clear example, the obvious one, if you follow up on the elections, you would notice that in April after the Thai New Year, Osong Gran, in a social media platform, the people bringing the campaigns of moving forward and reproducing by themselves more than 100% and we observe that, yes. We can overcome this echo chamber at the first step. That is just the beginning. And so how do we ensure that it could turn it into the voting in the ballot? So to distribute the information by one side, it's just like a child talking to the parents. So that's why we come up with the next campaign, that you need to translate the people who are at the front of you into the organic canvassers. That's why we have them, the canvassers turn into organic canvassers. So we set up a campaign that when you go home, when you go home during the long holidays, ask your parents to choose ground ground or move forward party. Ask your grandparents to choose move forward party so that we can turn the online support into on-ground support. And we see that the Thai people also have a very obvious political support. For example, they are making their own t-shirts, et cetera. I haven't seen this for a long time in the other election that I observed for more than 10 years. Mostly elections that you just stay still waiting for the election day. But for these elections, I believe one thing that move forward party can achieve as a success without having expected such a strong support is that we turn politics into a part of people's life, making people able to express their opinions that they want to choose this party and they want to support this party. Give me a second, please. So this brings us to the meat of the story. So how do we get the people to bring the content to reproduce it or to disseminate it? The answer is that what we need to do as a campaigner involve and have an impact of the life of the people who like our parties. For example, we have 300 policies. We come up with these three. So no matter what's a target audience, there must be a policy that's responding to what you look for. And yes, they would think this political party talked about you. They're concerned about you. So they're ready to reproduce those content or disseminate it. If you're asked whether we're the first party who's doing this, no, we're not the first political party who's doing this. The first politician who did this was Kun Cha Chaat Sittipan, the Bangkok governor. He has 200 policies for the Bangkok governor's campaign. But move forward parties, the only party that you come up strongly with this and he came up with a 300 policy. But I have to say that we argue that we need to really do that much and this one political party have to handle such an intensive amount of work. But it is an idea and it's a proven that it could continue. But I did not affirm that it would be a success formula for the next election because each of the elections, it's come with a change and there's also the development. But each of the elections, we need to accumulate the information. We have to have the knowledge base. We have to read the sentiment of the people and we have to collect everything we learn and make an informed decisions at the election town on how do we organize our campaign. And the next question I have, the questions about the legal framework, I would talk about it at the end. And this is the example of how we can make them, the people know that the elections campaign and move forward parties really have the policy involving their life. And when they have a buy-in and they want to generate the content, they would reproduce our policies and agenda without us having to pay a single buy for them. But it might have the legal implication, but I will talk about that later. So this is a page selling t-shirt. They love our party so much. So they have an ad for us on Facebook. This one. This is a page on Facebook that is like a parody assort here for political issues. So they really cheer us so much. And so they turn the policy into pictures. And we are trying to have a campaign to respond to what people look for. And the next question is, eventually at the end, the online campaigning, would it be the futures of the elections? The answer is, at the end, elections, we, I say it's not enough to sue online campaigning, but I stand firm that if you don't talk online campaigning, it is a no-no also because it's like you assess the way you live your life, the easiest way. Just observe yourself. How do you spend your time during today? How do you live your life? And statistically, 85% of Thai people access internet, have access to internet. And more than 70% of Thai people are addicted to internet. And if you pay a closer look at the TV, and you are familiar, right? That if you want to know about the news, the current trends, you have to turn on the TV and the radio. But it happens to be that currently, TV and radio has to shift their mode, they have to disrupt themselves and have online presence. So the campaigning, they need to have the online presence as well. But all in all, online world have a risk of having a high echo chamber is probably the case because of the AI system, the algorithm system, everything would be repeated. So that rises to making the campaigning move to the people in the up-countries or to the real waters. Just as I said, it turns to be the policy that when you go home, get your family to vote for Gaoglai. What kind of tools for this campaigning, for these elections, that is the most successful for us? As I showed earlier, TikTok. TikTok applications, the Chinese app, that even the US is fearing it, the US are now banning TikTok. We tease each other that if I'm in government, I have to ban TikTok. It's really brainwashing your whole idea and everything. But it doesn't mean that the app is bad, but the point in case is when you know the tools that you use for the campaigning, you have to understand it's nature. And for us, our team, we study the TikTok applications before the elections for almost two years. This is normal for the work that we study. Each of the tools are about its functions, about its pros and cons, and its characteristics. And we found out that first, TikTok applications, it would be used in such and such manner. And okay, we keep that in mind. But during the elections, just a few months before the elections, the trend of TikTok is just a boom, the booming of Thai people are really migrating to TikTok and becoming so addicted. It's like exponential. So it's just the serendipity, just that it happened to be that tough. And we noticed also that Mofford Party was successful in using these applications with a high success rate. And what about other SNS? Facebook, yes, we use that. Even also Twitter, but we have to consider each of the SNS, what are the distinctive characteristics? For example, Facebook, it's quite dry. Let me use this word. It's quite dry. The application for Facebook, it's also blocked the visibility of the post. It has a very high echo chamber. So Facebook, we delegated it as an application for broadcasting the important news. It's more very formal. So if you want to have the announcement of post important point, we use Facebook. And Twitter, we know that for Twitter, it's an application that your young generations like to use because it's an application that you can discuss and have a very interactive dialogue and argument. So we use this app to exchange information opinions, we use the TikTok app to listen to the opinions. Sorry, I made a mistake about the app. We use Twitter, but for the actions of opinion. But when it's TikTok app, we know the algorithm of TikTok is that who watched one clip or two clip that is from God, move forward party. The TikTok app would repeatedly on the content from the same source. So what happened is that I really dislike the move forward party with a strong passion, but then I just listen to it so that I know, so that I can just put all the blame on the most forward party. But when I click and listen to it and I listen to the second and third clip, what happened is that the algorithm of the TikTok app would run the information that involve a move forward party only to me who hate move forward party with a vengeance. But from hating it when you start absorbing information inside of you, no, this is not that bad, this party is all right, it's okay. And then we can turn the hater or the suspicious one, the doubtful one into okay, let's give it a try, let's give this party a chance but you need to know the characteristic of each of the application first. And then the loophole in the legal framework for the political finance of the election, I can say that, according to the election law of Thailand, the campaigning of the central political parties that we have the cap of 44 million baht or 1.5 million US dollars. And to be honest, to campaign for the whole country with a 60 million population with 44 million baht, how do we do that? That's why we realized that, okay, beside low cap, although the limitation and also our party is poor. So it brought us to using the social media platform and I will be very honest with you that to use the social media platform, the control and monitoring is very low. I just make an example, Adamic case, say, I love move forward party, I'm the strong supporter. So I set up an avatar page, like an IO page, I pay them so that they can do the campaign from outside the country for the elections. They say, yes, we can do it because no one can really trap, right? That this page, that is really strong supporter of move forward party, it really belongs to the move forward party or third party who is really a fan of our party or just from the people who love the parties. So this is still a local, in the monitoring and controlling oversight, but we don't have that because by the time we have to pay for the elections, it's very stressful for us. We want also to have the money just like other political party. I know that it was the former elections, one party used 4,000 million baht for the election campaign. That was in the year 2019, and I can't say that. The limitations of the campaigning budget that is low, I know that it is CT, realize that. The government also know that this amount of budgeting is just to trick yourself, just to fool yourself. I can say that, that I live so near the election unit. The officers of the voting point, they are the one who pay for the vote-buying like 1,000, 2,000 baht. My mom received 2,500 baht. The officers of the ballot point, are the other one who pay for the vote-buying, who distribute the vote-buying money. This is Thailand. And aside from the legal local, for the overseeing of the money spent on the social media, on like campaign, there are another problem is that the lack of unity, the uncertainties of implementing the law, about political finance of ECT. I would like to give you an example. A provincial ECT, answer one thing, but the central ECT say a totally different thing. I was so confused. Sometimes I call the provincial ECT, it's like, did you talk to the central, you're on the headquarter? Don't just say something that you don't know for sure, please. So that is an implementation problem. And the third point, the third problem, is really a loophole of the law. For example, it traced back to the very low cap, 44 million baht for the election campaign. The problem we talked this morning is that in the elections, we have observer, correct? And these elections, I just estimate that we have about 100,000 units for the voting point. So if you want to send observer to all the voting point, it's 100,000 cents. And the minimum wages per day is, when you calculate it, 35 million baht. So the ECT say that the compensation for the observer, it has to come from the quota of political party. So it's mean that I have to use the 44 million baht for the campaigning. The 35 million baht has to be paid for the election observer. So my question is that, what did the ECT thought of? I think about when you draft this law, I always argue this point with the ECT, not counting the so many multiple things. For example, cannot sell merchandise online. I don't know whether ECT has, they never use a choppy and lasada. So this is what I reflect to the ECT all the time, because I argue with them since 2019, when we were the future forward parties. So if you can only come up with this kind of law, you can just use the new graduate. That's it, that's it all for me, thank you. I think the format is now to have all the speakers present, and then there'll be a question and answer session. But I would like to summarize just a little bit. This is something that's quite interesting. Because in the past election, everyone says that the move forward party, should have been the prime minister, but an online prime minister, yeah. That's all he can be, like an online prime minister. And at the same time, there are large parties that has huge amount of funding. So the question is that in the case that a party has a lot of money, and then they use a foreign company to influence or to try and sway the electoral votes as a political party, or who is working on a political party, what sort of prevention measures can we take? You will see point of view of the academicians. Okay. First of all, I would like to ask you to listen to Thai first. Because Thai is not a strong language. I will try and speak in Thai, but if I slip in some English words, I'm sorry about that. I'm going to talk about a small research that I'm working on, is about the latest election campaign, about the latest election, and how it affects the electoral votes. Actually, Kunwar Wut has shown you about campaign financing. Certainly, there are many parties that uses a lot of money for ads on Facebook. The move forward party, you can see here, it's zero right at its edge on the right, and also the posting of social media. We measure the various posts on social media. This is from March to April. Actually, the party that engages with social media, the most is per Thai, and the second in rank is Gargai or move forward party. But you can see that every party sees the importance of the social media as tools for election. As mentioned by Kunwar Wut, it's cheap and it's to the point. But you know, from what do you see? They are not the ones who win the election, right? Even though they engage with the people, and they talk with the people a lot during the social, or the ones who play so many ads, they might not have won elections. What I am looking at in my research for campaigning, concerns disinformation and misinformation. You know, what those are false data that has been posted. I have seen, you know, when Marcos Jr. won the election in the Philippines, there were a lot of misinformation during that time, and it actually created a win for Marcos Jr. So we were concerned. I was concerned that whether this would happen in Thailand or not. So for the campaign, when I was thinking before the election, what are our expectations for that election? First, we expect to see a lot of intense use of disinformation, misinformation during campaigning. So these are theories according to the Philippines model. And we expect to see a diversification of content, the use of video-based platforms, for example. It might be Instagram, it might be TikTok, that could mention what Khun Varawut has mentioned. There might be long contents. It might be used on Twitter or Facebook. We expect to see a very variety of content. And our next concern, or what we expect to see in the election, was to actually voter suppression. This is the model, the American model. You know, they actually duped the election, electors that, okay, the booth, you know, is here, but it's actually not the right location. You know, they falsified information for the voters. This happened in the past two elections in America where they provided wrong information to the voters so that they totally missed the election. And the last, what we expect to see is micro-targeting of voters through the social media segmentation to customize and try to expand their reach to the voters. So these are the expectations, something we don't want, but we expect to see that in the election. All right, apart from that, there are certain contents about TikTok. Because I think TikTok is extremely important and interesting, which provides another layer for manipulating votes. I would like you to see the two cases that happened before this election, the Marcos Jr. election, and Kun Chat Chat. Both elections happened near about the same time. They both used TikTok for campaigning. For Marcos Jr., he created a new brand, which is TikTok. And then he created content which is not related to politics. They don't talk about politics. He talked about raising dogs, making cups of coffee, trying to create a new image for himself and to delete or erase the legacy of his father. This actually was effective in the Philippines because the young voters actually voted for Marcos Jr. And we wondered why there were certain hypotheses that the young generation have new liberal ideas. They may not have voted that way. They should have been voting for more liberal aggressive, but actually they voted for Marcos. So that was a mechanism of rebranding himself. And the new generation did not have this chair memory or the image of Marcos Jr. They did not know how bad it was or how difficult it was. They saw Marcos Jr. as a right and he's a good, cool, young leader. So the education of the Philippines and the curriculum has been set up to actually try to erase the image of the Marcos rule and the legacy. Now, also in terms of Concha Chath, Concha Chath actually talked at FCCT that he mentioned that he won the election because of TikTok. And during the campaigning he didn't know why his team had made him do squats and pick up stones during the campaigning. And then he asked the team and the team said, oh, actually the followers of Concha Chath in TikTok are not voters. They are the sons and daughters of voters. The fan base of Concha Chath is 7 to 12 years old. They are not even voters, you know. But what happened was, like Convara would say, yeah, you tell your dad, you tell your mom that Concha Chath is great. He is the strongest minister in the whole of Thailand. And so if the father and mother does not have any choice or they may be wavering between some parties that there was a condition that was polarized, we want someone who is more neutral. So, you know, the young children can influence the father and mother. It is a mechanism which is quite new, you know. Before that, even though it was a social media platform, we would not, you know, it's just the voters, right, who would choose. And not the children of the voters who would try to influence their parents. So actually, the TikTok is an interesting platform to use for our canvassing votes. But there are also other problems. The next slide, please. From our expectations that we had, what are the realities during the election? This is what the team found. We would like to share our initial findings. We're not going to go very deep in. But what we find is that we don't find a lot of fake news or misinformation. They did not use fake information. They do not try to mislead the voters or manipulate the data. Actually, there's an explanation. It is because the election rules will actually quite strict, you know, for any use of this information and misinformation, the election rules since 2018. So this act has been used since the last election and is still in place. So what is quite interesting is that it is last time, you know, you'll probably hear that some of the voters were caught and then were fined for sharing false information. It's actually quite contradictory during Preyut's rule. But right now, it actually goes into the details with very strict rules, not just the party, but for those who are linked to the parties or the supporters. They are actually controlled by this act as well. So that was why there is sort of strict control. You remember when the ECT actually called in some of the political parties to explain what they were doing, but this did not happen earlier on. And we found some diversification of content, as mentioned, and as this is what we expected, the contents would change, the contents were applied according to the platform. We have organic handbassers on TikTok, as mentioned. So this is quite interesting and exciting for Thai politics. And we found certainly really micro-targeting of voters to add to segmentations. But one thing that is interesting is the use of social media influencers. Pre-election, actually pre-announcement of the actual dates that the campaigning is allowed. These influencers actually did not disclose that there are certain parties' voters. But the presentation is like we hire vloggers to take them somewhere, to go overseas and create content, and then suddenly they will talk about this party. They say, oh, you know, it's close to election time. It is a presentation like what the fan base of that YouTuber is following, but then you also insert content that is politically motivated. He said, oh, he mentioned his party, so I should maybe look at it with that. So it follows a theory of socialization, of, you know, a little bit of like a grooming of the fans. You know, after you listen to this a lot, you might believe it that it is true. Even though we do not find this information, you know, during the election, but post-election, when there is no more law, it's like a hand-to-hand box. Everything comes out. You can see all this misinformation, this information in rampant, you know, you say the move forward party won. It was unexpected, right? So that was why some people were unhappy with the results. So that was why there are many campaigns that goes against the move forward party. Is it true? This is what you're doing? I guess it's like college school, say, for example. Another interesting point is in choosing the move forward party, then, you know, the U.S. would actually intervene. They are going to build a base in Chiang Mai, for example. And lastly, that still going on says, who are they going to be teaming up with, you know? So a lot of misinformation came out, post-election. Another point I forgot to add to the slide is that the disinformation that happens in line or in the various apps that are in the description that cannot be tracked. In line, you have line groups, right? You can see that sometimes the fake information is shared about politics. Is it true? But it's been shared everywhere. The risk is that it is even worse in social media in trend inscription. It means that you who is a sender and a receiver knows who sent it. You actually cannot pull out certain parts of your conversation unless it has been approved. But, you know, you cannot take a look. The ECT cannot look into it. Even regulatory units or body cannot actually quite control this. This is similar to misinformation about, you know, treatments for cancer that are falsified or that are not verified. Next slide. So that is the end of my presentation, but I would like to also leave with you as a thought. For those who invest a lot into the platform for ads on Facebook, there's no guarantee that they are going to be winners. I feel that social media is a medium, right? It depends on how you use it. If the content is bad, it will not become viral. It's not quite related as to how much you use it. If you don't know how to create good content, you know, some content people might not be interested in at all. So the top spender may not translate into a winner or an election. Another point is that the responsibility of the platform, this actually can be discussed a lot more. Because, you know, the platform, once you see a disinformation in the platform, whether it's during the election or any time, is it possible to engage a platform or them to look after the content, how much you can engage and how much you can make them responsible? Let me go back to the Philippines. During that election last year, a guideline was issued for political ads. It means that they see it as important. But for time, there's no guideline at all for political ads, for meta as well. So they try to advocate this prior to that. The platform do come in, but they did not do anything. No guidelines was issued like the Philippines. Another point is that the legal status of the platform that has been widely discussed, it's quite funny, we call them platform, but there is still a debate whether they are platform or publisher of social media, Facebook, Twitter. Facebook, Twitter, they invest a lot more than 10 million to have the corporate call themselves, call them platform, not publisher. It means that there must be responsibility, legal responsibility, certain legal responsibility that they don't want to take up, right? TikTok is even worse. You know when you ask the public policy team, they call themselves like an AI company. They call themselves an AI company, not a social network, not a social media. That's how they say, they compare themselves to YouTube and not Twitter. That is quite interesting because how do you then manage, or do you request for assistance or cooperation? And they say no, we are just a content provider. We feed video for you, you know, it depends on what you want to see. And AI manages all this content, but it's based on your interest, right? So I'm not involved. But I do have to give credit to TikTok, but they do talk to ECT and they said that they cut out all the political ads. But what is a political ad? Just in case Konbar would have mentioned that, you know, you use TikTok a lot, how are you separating, you know, politically or organic ambassador, or, you know, the public. I'm not pointing any fingers, but they say which one is paid support, which one is not, you know, they might use it or they might not use it. How do you separate them? And would the platform be able to differentiate or distinguish between those two? And finally, anything that I told you today, there is no real in-depth research about misinformation or disinformation that has been released online. How has that affected the election? There's no effect at all. This is from observation, but there's no real research. I'm going to be working on this next, but there's no real research that's linked. How disinformation or misinformation or even real information, how does it affect the results, the electoral results? So, that's what I want to leave with you. Thank you. So these are all the perspectives also from the professors who actually made it very interesting. So there would be a group about what the professors say about it. There would be some of the platforms that would be just the end-to-end, like centers and receivers only, that, for example, apply application. And it would bring us to the... maybe there's more chance to abuse information that the, for example, the government agencies or CSO could not even... or have it to track. This is one thing we need to be careful about. Our speaker, the last one, has two opinions and would express to you. We're probably from the civil society. So, from what I see, please step forward with you. So, good afternoon to all of you, and everyone starts to speak about many different things and also about the ad. I am maybe the last one of the sessions, but I might be able to present some other viewpoint. And I have the observation as well that right now we are... it's like we are trying to find the information operations that have an impact as an influence to change the decisions on water decisions. So how do we track that? This is really I.O. This is really the page of... maybe no mini-page or a blank check. It's like you are playing hide and seek in a dark room. And I encountered this also. I have a project together with a number of my networks. It's a project called DUE. We work on collecting the information and data and trying to find the ecosystem all the way to verify on the ecosystem in the information transfer on the election campaign. And we collect a number of each information. First, the interactions. And second, the content on the disinformation. And third, the problems about the content, as the professor said. And we found out the similar thing. It's limited. And we found false elections. After the election results have been cleared, who's the majority party that win the vote? So there's more disinformation that's been released. If I can have the next slide, please. I could probably answer some of the questions, but not all. I might alternate between them so that we can continue with the flow. This is the information you collect from the Twitter and Facebook. These are the interactions of the information. So we collect almost one million content from more than 10,000 accounts. And we collected from the former official account from the candidate's former account and also official political party account. And also observe the account that has a close relationship with the official account. So all in all, about 10,000 accounts. So in the pictures, I'm sorry that it's all in Thai. I'm not very proficient in English, but I'm welcoming all the questions you have. So the first right circle is the communities of the information of political party A. So we said A, B, C, because if we disclose the name of political party, it would be dangerous. We don't know how to take responsibility for that. So we use a political party A, B, C. And the circle represents the account of each of the accounts. And so it represents each of the accounts. The big circle demonstrates that it would be the point of release of the content. So the blue one on top, it also shows the account of political party A. So it would be the main like mothership to release the information that would be shared from reputable supporter and also from reputable news media and have the interactions in the community. And you see which community have the dense supporter and more reaction that would be bigger in circle. And the important observation for this one is that if you see the purple, gray and dark purple, it might not be clear on the pictures here. And we discuss among our team how do we define it? Can we define it as IO? Is it IO? And the conclusion is the same as everyone because there's so much of a loophole. I don't know how to say whether it's a yes or a no. It's a very complicated ecosystem so we cannot find out exactly how do we say. So we try to find a non-human one. For example, in one account, 24 hours post 300 messages and then just have only 23 seconds of rest during the frequency. So the frequency of the point is extremely high. And we also have an argument that if one account has multiple people behind it, is it wrong? There's no human being behind it. There's multiple numbers. So we collect the information and explain it in a way that there's some suspicious behavior that is really non-human behavior. But are they AI? I cannot define for sure are they being hired? So it's no clear information to support that decision as well. So this is the first picture and we have questions about the trend. We have about 1 million content. At first we thought it would be a lot of like strong extreme argument, a lot of attack. But we found that 40% about 400,000 messages and about the campaign about highlighting the ideologies of the political party in policy and strategies more than the strong hard work. And second is the information for the election and how to verify your name and the number of the political parties and that would be secondary information. And when we limited this information pre-election day, I'm sorry I forgot to inform that these are pictures in April, pre-election, April. And the next one that I got I said which political party reap the benefit. I think this is self-explanatory in a way that who, which party benefit from the online campaigning and show the interaction thereof. The next picture please and it's about the total amount of money spent for the Facebook app. And this information I think is from the same social Facebook app. It depends on what day you collect the information. And this one might be just doesn't look very appealing. I crop it out. I have a few observations. This one is a Saturday pre-election which is a southern of May. Five out of ten official account so they collect only the official political party account and the provincial candidate and with them there is no collections of the data in a formal way and some political party might not show the number as an overview as a total but I want to show that five out of ten of the political party that have to put the app on Facebook is that they get the MP into the parliament. So five out of ten who willing to pay for the app get the seat. But that is just my observation. You cannot assume that if you pay for Facebook ad it would lead you into the win seat in the parliament. But they have additional observations. After I work as an observer on the digital ecosystem. Aside from being cheap or cost effective this is a trend that it's like you are up to there. You are cutting edge by example if I have to take responsibility so please share the responsibility with me. That is one party that gets just one heartless seat and also get the constituency in the provinces that we say there's a big dynasty political plan for example like Cha Khai. Cha Khai they are changing some of the identity on Facebook. They do we love, they present to the media they present something that is more up to there. But at the same time they have the base, the voting base and that I can assume that they have the voting base of the country. Mostly, but it doesn't relate to the need that require the online campaign. Because I believe that using the online campaign would bring to the parties really awareness in the social as well. So this is it for the observations and the next question is about the regulations of the ECT. About the ECT regulation, is it in alignment with the digital trend? I want to give you an example if a number of you see before the election, you saw the post of the secretary so when, who give the interview through the mobile phone in his office, you will see in the comment section that large majority asking where's the computer. Because he only have the amulet, Buddha amulet and Buddha statue in his room and there's no computer. So it's even for me, who's a new generation who use mobile phone as an as regularly. I feel that there's still the complication of the digital world and it's very hard to decipher everything. And what we see usually, just to say like a forest we see only a few leaves but at the same time for those who is ECT who involve directly with the election that they could maybe only spell the word but don't know what it's involved at all. And also for the I know when you do the name you know later campaign for the public hearing and it is the roles of the ECT to facilitate and the ECT have rules and regulations for the the citizen to sign in the petition form I'm not sure whether they can do it online but but the ECT said they don't want to do it on the paper bed so they said they want just CD or flash drive as a petition only so I want to show you a highlight of the regulations but if we want to be fair with the ECT I believe that all the rules and regulations is just a part of the bureaucratic system that's trying to facilitate or provide convenience to the society but the type of bureaucratic system it's very traditional and it has been manipulated monopolized by the leading belief only and to expedite to make it accessible in a quicker manner it's very difficult. The way they try to solve it is always launching an app or a bill. I believe that NCPO have the one stop service but I'm not sure whether it's been applied it's the same thing as the cashless society but they won't have to download the applications and then even if you have a smart card you cannot use it and I would like to go quickly and the next one is the spending for the online spend of the political party is transparent how do I say that when you talk about transparency even though you confirm it is transparent you have to look at the process whether it's auditable whether you could monitor and validate or what we find even if you could even check it you cannot be 100% sure it is transparent and also I would like to talk about the tip-talk as a brainwashing tool I would like to refuse that and so even though tip-talk is kind of like a brainwash but tip-talk they clad together with the ECT to set up the center to fight against this information and misinformation so if you use tip-talk for campaigning online it's not a misinformation of this information because they have this unity already you see everyone look at move forward but those who want to attack tip-talk for misinformation and this information you have to ask ECT and tip-talk what did that center do they will have no information aside from when they declare the opening of the center their function has been delivered and for the Facebook that's as everyone say and I just would like to fill in a little bit more that is in relation to the project that I'm doing with my network is that the information for example on Twitter so we can allow us to access it and to see the interactions of the account quite significantly maybe a little bit of that before Elon must become the owner that you can use it's to communicate in a technical way but Elon must he's on board and he's become more commercialized so it's quite difficult to get the information from the account back office but Facebook they're trying to use a way that they have the tools, they have their own mechanism the private one that they can solve according to what you say but they would not allow you to know what they do, they're trying to just explain for example this information regarding the election Facebook say it has to be a full official account and to use the ad it would have the headline that this content is from the political party ad and it would it takes you there to verify before the approval of the post not like it would be longer than a normal ad and also to collect the information of the Facebook ad for seven years if it's about the election but at the same time the access of the information or the negotiations to make this kind of process not transparent and more participatory I think Facebook still not giving the enough sufficient answer for this and they're trying to shrink away from this and this information for those who work on this information we also encounter the live information in the live app we all know that how do we collect information when we collect information it might be against a technical methodology because it's like the end-to-end communication but when you share it it widespread to 200 people for example so as in as digitalization it's not about misinformation or election alone but the algorithms of all the platforms are trying to go into the direction of commercialization getting the benefit it might sound bad because it is bad but I do have TikTok as well so when I watch when they teach how to post the ad they will say that why do you think people buy they buy it from the content no they buy it because of the emotions so the algorithm would serve that they would make everyone decided based on their emotional sentiment so who understands the algorithm more might be able to catch up that okay you need to take a deep breath be so that you don't be in the equity chamber but those people who cannot catch up of this kind of platform trick and gimmick and the last part that I would like to say is about the CSO support to the monitoring and of the spending on the online campaigning how can we do that very difficult because it's a highly complex but if you ask me it's coming back to the basic again so how do we do catch up to it or at least we verify the information before cherry we need to understand and believe that this might be misinformation or disinformation you have to have some doubt before cherry or maybe have a disclaimer that this is the source so you need to verify the source I believe that the freedom to believe or to make decisions so what is fact what is the truth but how do we understand that how do we know that this type of narrative or this set of misinformation meaning what and what type of functions does it try to deliver so I think being aware is very important and I would like to ask also for the CSO how do we do so that ETT can support the monitoring of the online internet very difficult I might think the same way as we will follow there's so much loophole for example the pain from outside from foreign countries or cryptocurrencies instead of giving the money you give the Buddha amulet which is crazy so at least ECT should enable the people to get the information and actually provide the convenience for the water to really access the information easily for example we watch we receive the information of the location of each voting unit only three or four of them before the election day and this is always the case but do they have the information to be frank on observations the water can verify the right and voting before the election day they can check where they are, where is the point that they need to go and you can check that on the ECT website so that they know in advance but I know that ECT have that location but they intentionally not the information so I don't want to say that they are confiscate the information but this is just my observations and next point I believe we have Q&A right this is so much fun I think many people have questions definitely so I would like to open up the floor in a few issues which I have already mentioned first I wanted to inform you about using digital platform for electoral campaign that would be approval people who might be important whether they have in terms of funding in terms of network this is the elderly people the elderly people do not use TikTok or any other social media a lot but for the line application they use this a lot therefore if in the future any digital platform that is to be used for electoral campaign I think the party do not give importance to these traditional channels or methods for electoral campaigning what I am like to point out is that if one country wants to have a healthy democracy the citizens must be well informed they must have correct information the use of digital platform for electoral campaign in the future we've been using a lot but I think in the future it's going to be even more used because the new generation and the larger amount of the population will be using it as well so I don't know whether political parties or civil society or academics I want to make you think about how to solve this problem to promote this group who is not adapt to the digital platform to be able to access the correct information secondly vote-buying it can be bought everywhere on any platform whether it's offline or online the point is if there is vote-buying online who is going to be checking definitely it must be a state official those officials are not teenagers you know they don't sometimes have the skills to check or trace these illegal activities they might buy vote-to-games say if you go and compete in a game if you win if you lose then you can get money later because offline that's what they did vote-buying to games so with digital platform for vote-buying can political parties bring up measures to try and mitigate abuse of these channels and thirdly you know the I.O. is real now where does I.O. come from who hire those I.O.s say from the report that I've read these I.O.s are sometimes state officials and the state officials in group where they cannot be traced does it mean that we are actually facing problems of digital platform with the officials who are actually supposed to be regulating the platform but then they have become a problem themselves so in terms of integrity of these officials who check these activities online so how can we deal with that so I'm looking bottom up I'm not looking I'm looking at the real thing and then we should need to work together say if the officials are actually working or using those I.O.s and they said you have to deal with this one, two, three, four, five or check the information online of the various parties why to check whether the political parties are actually following legal guidelines or not would it be a breach of privacy or not a breach of the right of the parties or not yes definitely there will be as possible please any questions now from the from the from the from the from the from ... I have been continuing of guarantor from the I was also from I was also from have been Roman our member I am packed different strength and weaknesses. You know, whenever you debate anything online, there's not much physical attack. No fights, right? No fist cuffs. But a lot of these issues then would be thrown in online. But there are certainly violence from hate speech. And you're talking about disinformation and misinformation of fake news. So that is uncontrollable and that replaces the physical violence. And, you know, in Thai society, a lot of hate speech bounds not only during the election. I have experience, we have to ask Kun Adi Aman whether in Singapore was there ever any ban on social media and electoral campaign online or not? Because I went with, I worked with Dr. Shishin Shuan, who was the opposition in Singapore. And I went in as a tourist and I went to observe their election. They thought I was a Singaporean. I was sitting in the office and the police came. And then they accused him. They're saying he was using social online for campaign. And this also happened in another country, I think in Cambodia. That is actually an attempt to take down the opposition. I don't know whether Kun Adi knows about this. You know, all over the world, they campaign everything online. But Singapore is still banning any campaigning online. I think the more forward party uses a lot of this, I think others then would follow. The new generation would then certainly follow suit. We have the middle income people who have access, those who are literate. But we also have many who are illiterate, very poor people who are not used to accessing these platforms. They might not use line even, you know, they would just receive calls or pick up money sometimes online. Your question is very valid. How are we going to solve this question? I would like to express my idea Kun Adi. Can you please voice your opinion? I don't know the nitty gritty but from what I've learned is Singapore is one of the most stringent ones there is. But then this is the whole issue and Peter raised it earlier. There is a tension between regulating and setting limits on online community and also expression of views online versus freedom of speech. And also there is security considerations stemming out of hate speech and all the negative effects that could come out of expressions of views that takes place in the online sphere. And every context is different. And this is why we would like to promote national debates on these issues. But then the conundrum is that if these matters are left to the devices of each country, we have found that it may be difficult for certain countries, especially the smaller countries, to gain attention from the platforms, to have the necessary resources to deal with the problems themselves. Therefore we have concluded that even though the solutions may be context driven in national scope, but the effort requires regional or even in the future global effort so that there is a sufficient mass to tackle the issues. And we come from quite, we work in the Asian Pacific region and it's very diverse and the giants of countries in the region but they are very tiny countries as well. And we see this as an opportunity that countries can work together, big and small for the benefit of everyone. Now having said this, because it's a regional effort, there needs to be common ground. So you can't tackle each and every problem, but you can find starting from the lowest common denominator. For example, starting from definitions, from the based on experience, the types of problematic contents that is out there in terms of what platforms can or cannot do. So things like this, there is enough common ground to work regionally and create regional cooperation. Well, we've tried to, at every opportunity, we try to save this, but it probably takes time to gain traction and we're talking about the vast region as well. I don't know whether it's a question or a comment because I am studying social media that has been used by various parties for campaigning. When you say there is an IO operation, it is what but not how. And I think Thai society cannot yet understand IO. We have an image that those who are working at a security unit, you know, they are operating against the people in that country, but you know, in the political arena, the various parties, they also use IO. They are doing it themselves. They are using various marketing agencies or the various companies as well. So if you look at the regulations of the ECT on spending on money for campaigning, there are a lot of loopholes. They do not have to report their direct spending, but if they say if they hire a third company, you know, a third person party company, they don't have to report it or they might not even have to mention this. So it's a conversation for preparing the readiness for the next election. It might be faster than we expect even the next election, but at the same time, Ios, which I feel it's a problem, a lot of times you think of IO as sending risky messages or hate speech or misinformation or disinformation. But one thing that is controversial in itself is that you have never looked at IO in which they push a huge amount of message, but it is positive. And the effect is like what Kuhnham has mentioned, that it's becoming a socialization. It's like grooming. It's like making them change that electoral vote. It has happened in this campaign. But society is not ready to define it because the result of the election has not yet been clearly seen or defined or how it had led to this. This is just the beginning. We are quite worried that in the next election, there might be even more smooth. You know, it becomes organic because what Kuhnham has mentioned, there are many obstacles in trying to make people understand because it's automated. It's AI. It looks smooth. There's no medium. We're talking about IO as an authentic behavior. But there are directions for those organics. Like there is a father for the people to do this, for example. And people don't understand. And we might need to discuss this a bit more in order to understand the process better. It is a viewpoint which is quite interesting by everyone. We might give a few minutes to our speakers to respond to the comments or the viewpoint. I would like to share, maybe understand my point of view on information discussion, IO. Information operations does not mean simply we are putting in this information, you know, create hate to the other party for our IO, as we understood it, is that there must be someone, say there is a headquarter, right? And then they order the network to disperse content whether it's positive or negative. The network, you know, once they press a button, the message is ready to be sent out. And they have a set of answers. How can I explain it so clearly? It's because our party was accused that the move forward party has many officers relating to social media, which is the IO. And then we have hundreds. I don't know where I would get the money to do that. But okay. But whether you would believe it or not, if you notice, compared as to UGC, user generated content, and the person who is actually working on IO operations, information operation, the thin line is that whether they are volunteers or whether it is a process where they are paid, you know, go by the move forward party has been accused that even though it's UGC, it's really IO. But in fact, we are able to respond to people's need. And we found points where people would respond to. And then they would send off those data by themselves. But this is almost like we are pointing fingers at other parties. But I have monitored other accounts or the users of people who said they are a supporter of this and that party. But I saw more IO's than what we did. So there is actually many accusations that we hire a huge agency that can, you know, 10 million baht to hire IO's. We don't have even money to pay the candidates. I would like to also curtail my followers and experiment that we try to see that when it's a political disinformation. What are the people that make people inside and share those new or those content that is a political disinformation? And what we encounter is quite surprising when we found out that they became friends and at the level of education. I'm not a factor at all. It's not the expediter to make people share this kind of political disinformation content. What we encounter, I would like to put it simple in our team. We said because of love. We love that political party. We love that kind of idea. They love that ideologies. Or they love the person who shares that from the source of the post, for example. The one who shares might be the relative or the trusted person. So it's like a gatekeeping mechanism in a way that if their parents, their grandparents or relatives share it, it's okay. The political influence in the social media. That's why they decide to spread that butter. It doesn't mean that they are not aware because they are all or any other reason at all. It's because of love. And it is very interesting because it means that when it's political issues, it's difficult to talk. How do you solve that? And also referring to the research from Singapore, that even though that actually people, even though they are aware that there's fake news, that it's a fake news on the news feed, there's very limited number who decided to correct the fake news that they see on the feed. Because for the same stuff, that would be the condition for the people to decide to correct that this is fake. They first have to see that when they decide to correct it, what is it that they have to trade off? They might have to trade off the relationship with the family if they say to the auntie that auntie, you shall fake news. Maybe the auntie might don't want to be the auntie anymore. You cannot go home during so grand anymore. This is a real experience, but this is a case of the U.S. And they're correcting about the ideologies and you are uninvited from Thanksgiving. It really happens. This is about post-charing. And so if they believe that they're correct information, that would be people who believe and listen to them that, yes, it is wrong. And it would be a happy changing. And that when they would decide to correct the news. So because the humanity is supposed to let it go. And secondly, in about award buying that is us, I would like to say from the perspective of political scientists, pure political ideas, award buying is a chronic problem of the third world countries are developing countries that with very, very each democratic system. And it's with a problem on the economy because people prioritize the livelihood first, ideology come after. And how? Because there's no other way to change it. A sign from restructuring everything we have to have democratic government that put this as a priority and also the capacity to solve the economic problem. So that down the road, people do not need to be concerned about the survival anymore. So they start to approach about the idea or the ideology that shows the political party because of policy banks, not because of populism. So the step has to start from the broad structures and then hopefully it will solve the problem in the political cultures. And the board of mind would be difficult. That is the expectation. And the last part about RO, I also would like to say echo what Kuhn said that it, of course, the memory is that the army would be the one doing the IO, but actually IO is not just in that way, only the democratic side or other parties also can do the IO as well. And it could be a negative IO or positive IO. That's what Kuhn said. Therefore, I believe another question or another way that we would look at it is yes, there might be another way for us to, for them to counter itself, a mechanism to prevent IO from happening. It might have to be the way of the self-corrupting system that it would solve its own problem. There's no single bullet or the one universal solution that should be solved by IO when it could be a positive or negative solution. And last one, I would like to add up from Kuhn's party, is that Singapore? As Kuhn said, it has a legal framework to prevent this information that is quite strange. Another perspective is that the anti-fake news laws of Singapore, it has a layer of cost for their responsibility or liability to the platform. As I said at the beginning, the platforms always just above the responsibility to be responsible for the content on the platform. But in Singapore and other countries, I believe Germany also enforced the platform to have the liabilities regarding the content that in that platform, if it leads to hate speech, violence, and others, the platform has to be removed at this limited time. Otherwise, they have to pay the fine, the sanctions. So this might be another measure to prevent or elevate the IO or negative content in the social media platform. I should answer before, because the professor said it all, and I totally agree with Kuhn and what the professor said about the IO. This kind of brainwashing is not just about sharing the same content with Italy for a thousand times. I would like to give you an example of that. For the psychological warfare, it's to reward me, you know, those kinds of people to sing and get the army to sing on the stage. In summary, I believe that there's two main points, two main things of this discussion. One, the ECT after the establishment, we wanted to be the one who oversize authority to levelling the people. And if we have these innovations like ECT, the tools are ECT, if it's too functional, how do we get them to adapt to come to the current trend? So that's what we talked about, the, you know, like the army is the one so ECT also has to take a hard road that if the ECT still wants to remain relevant, I still think it's okay to have other innovations. I think it is very important for the ECT. So if we get this ECT to refine something or validate something like that, 300 policy by move forward party is true. So all the political party has to submit the policy to ECT and then also if the public would like to change it into like a poster or anything, it's free. By free will. But ECT, if anyone wants to know anything that is a fact and they have to come to ECT, that they will get the official information from political party. I'm not sure that would be a solution, but I think the main point is how to ensure that this agency that should be impartial have credibility and that we have confidence enough to feel that everyone is playing on the level playing round. And secondly, so how do we ensure that the water, the eligible water are not under any influence about money, about buying, about IO. I think it's a dilemma still that the free will that we say, if you think about free will, what is it that we can accept? What is it that we feel that this is not a free will by free will? As a political party, as we say, it might be choosing the policy. It should think about the value, the value of the policy that we feel that it's the most welcoming in the democratic system. But there's still another gap, like I could choose it because I love that political party. I love that. I'm a fan. Is it okay? That is not a free will. So this is not easy. So I will limit the change of mind at one level. Because I don't play off campaigning like the high park or the WAN through anything. We want to change the mind of people through the policy to demonstrate that at least a candidate are really going on the ground. We are not, you know, assist the power or anything. We really don't listen to you. We understand. We get you. So this is also about the method. But we see that the operation that leads to violence, I think that the lie should be put here. What type of operation that would lead to non-democratic system? For example, the release of the fake news, like the U.S. are setting up the army base in Thailand. It would lead to the understanding that, you know, they need to seize the power from the move forward party because move forward party allow foreign interference. So this lie, it should be to mean what is non-democratic. What is non-democratic? I think that would not be the violating all rights. The other thing would be the free will. Like you can argue, you can, you know, have this argument. It's okay. But violence could not happen. Of course it's non-democratic. And we believe that democracy is that we can express our opinion. And our truth is not the ultimate truth. But during the election, we're trying to find the common truth in the society, right? And this is it that I would like to say. Right. From listening to you, actually the move forward party is not the best in canvassing votes online. We have points where we cannot change as well. That point is trying to canvas vote through line. If you, I would like to provide a little analysis. During the past election, the misinformation falls new. We face that a lot, but we found that in line. Line is, you know, quite sometimes there are a lot of this information. Of course you cannot go into that line group and explain. Let me tell you that, you know, behind the scene, we have to meet every day. It says Hittah did not actually graduate from this school. Gow Kai will allow the U.S. to set up the base here, there. Everything is on line application. Of course it is similar to crisis management, right? So how can the party respond in this case? Certainly we have to use our skills in respond online. How can you manage to get the responses into those line groups? We still have to use social media to find these fake news. So we're lucky in terms that high people are totally addicted to social media. But there is also another point where you have to consider if they believe that the move forward party will allow the U.S. to set up the base, we cannot change their mind. They decide to choose. What happened was we decided so they are not our customer. We cannot reach them. So in responding to them, it's just to set a line, is to draw a line. And we clarify ourselves and what you said was wrong. And then afterwards, it's a measure of integrity using the consideration of the people now. Apart from this, I would have to say, in fact, ECT has a monitoring unit for monitoring social media during the election. This is just a fun story. But the party have been, from we watch, you can see around a million messages. ECT has 20 officers monitoring the electoral messages and campaign online. So what can you see with these 20 people in a tiny room, small in this room, that we have 20 computers? So finally, what happened was the political party has to monitor ourselves. And if the political party found fake news, false information, disinformation, and what we did, we have to write up a report and submit it to the ECT. This person or the message in this website is a misinformation, a slander, and then the ECT would look into it. The actual implementation is even worse because it takes a month for them to consider it. The message in the social media, it's gone. You don't even have to consider anything, you know, when the future forward party, you know, he writes certain messages, especially when he has a high status in society, a louder voice. The false information actually went very far. You know, before you can correct this misinformation took a month or a month and a half. I would like to add a little bit. You know, the number of the social media usage, you know, post-election, I had to report on that. I think in the morning, someone was doing an annual report on the usage of social media. The people who use it most are the officials for six hours per day. So, you see, it's a civil office. We would not believe it. We would believe that it's, you know, maybe the elderly or whatever. But in terms of, you know, the TikTok, you know, the civil officers use it the most. And it's very strange that the TikTok makes the move-out party win. All right. Are there any questions here? Yes. One question here, a comment here. Talk about social media, but we need to learn about organizing a debate. The election that I have the highest number of debate in the entire history. I'm not sure whether it's the most in Asia, but I believe that the debate, when we have a large number of debate, both from the CSO or from the media itself, it helps reducing the cost and also it helps with the campaign, per se. And also those, for example, the elderly who's not on social media, but they watch TV, there's always debate almost daily during the election time for them to watch. So, the debate, I observed that each of the political party, of course, the move forward party is the highest one. They would take a short clip of their own, on their own speech and then shorten it for TikTok and then repeat it. And each day there's always new content. I believe this is a very interesting movement. And I would like to thank the media and the CSO for allowing the people to have the opportunity not to have to go out under the rain, under the hot sunlight to watch the debate organized by the ECT because actually in the past no one came to the ECT debate because it's not very friendly and environmentally friendly for them. And so there's a new culture that you can just be at home, listen to everything. And I observe later on that when there's an objections or the, you know, the disagreement is always online. So the big protests become less and less. I'm not sure my observations are correct, but I just want to thank the media, yes, for their role. Thank you very much. Actually, I'm from BD Penong Yong Foundations. My name is Chok Chai Satawit. It is such a pleasure for me to be here to listen to the information. But as a person who works in the institute, I believe that the people vote and vote for the parties. It actually has three main relating points. One policy or the project that the political party would like to do. And secondly, the ideologies of the political party, whether it's liberal, conservationism, or the third one is the sentiment. I quite believe that it's a mix between what is between the ideology and sentiment, because we never know about the policy or the project, how it would turn out to be like, whether it is really feasible in four years. For example, ECT say that the policy is not like selling the dream of fooling, wood-winging the people, also popularism, that it's trick the people to vote for them, and it's not doable afterwards. So who actually evaluates those policies, whether it's doable or not, feasible or not? Because ECT themselves do not have, they do have the rules and regulations, but ECT do not have any mechanism to prove, to showcase to the people that which policy has a tendency to go to the positive or negative or doable or feasible. Or even if ECT would like to do that, it's not easy process, it's not easy to judge whether the policy or the project, it would turn out to be like A or B or C. So it's in this stage that the people have no place to turn to, they don't have any reliance to make an informed rational decision. It's between the, that's why it's a mix between ideologies and sentiments. So if you really cling to the ideology, it makes you, such have a strong sentiment afterwards. So if we have any institute that could be a place that people could turn to, could rely on, to provide impartial information and analysis. I think of the KPI, King Prabhuprila, Khachatipok, and also the Preeti Panamyo Institute, I would like to refer for the Thai history, when there's the change of the political reading in the 1932, the counterpart is Kanarasanod and Prabhupaka. At the end, the Kanarasanod lose and disappear from the system. It did not survive that. So at the end, they turned into dictatorship themselves, like the general power, that's why the army stepped into the power to cease the democratic regime and controlling it. But we might say that conservationism could double up the KPI and the Preeti Panamyo Institute, the private one, but we are not recognized as a, we were not recognized as a national institute. But by the ideologies, we can have the exchange. We all can have the exchange, no matter it's from the liberalism or conservatism. And ECCC, it's supposed to be impartial one or IDEA as well. We need to think further ahead of how do we do, so including a Reson University of the professor, how could you become a pillar when the people have nowhere to turn to from this day onward? Thank you very much, it's such an excellent perspective. And please, the next person, yes, I would like to add just a small point. It's about the CSO, whose work on the campaign, and like we watch and I love for the, as an observer of the elections, actually the activity of the CSO are quite very, very diverse also. We have water educations who provide knowledge to them, election observations to observe the elections, and civic education to, and these activities, are the activity that actually we should be allocated funding because it involves the expenditures. It should be the government funding provided to this activity. And everything of Thailand context, I pose a few questions. First, before the coup, there's a regulation where we clear one that ECT have to have the budget to provide support to the CSO in the election activity and election observations. But after the coup, they remove these rules. They remove these rules and the regulations. And in the recent elections, there's not allowing to have any observer. And this time also happening. But because the CSO are very alert and we watch as a discussion, so they give in because so that they can coordinate it together with the CSO. CSO like they're strong pillar for the society. But before the coup, when we still had these rules and regulations, the ECT need to have the money, quite a good amount, 10 million bucks or so. But ECT is the one who manage this budgeting. They're the one holding the money in their hand. And they would assign the CSO, that would be the observer for the elections. My idea is that this is just the wrong way. I talk about this for so many times. If we reform the election, we need to work on this. It has to be transparent. And we have to have a separate impartial committee, not ECT holding the money and say that, oh, I will give you the money to this organization to do, you know, like monitor ECT themselves. It's a conflict of interest. So the ECT, if we would like to propose the reform, we have to push for this agenda so that it would be truly free and impartial. I believe we are coming at the end. Before we conclude, I would like just to take one minute for the perspective about I.O. But the government who's the one acting as an I.O. Or the official acting as an I.O. Comparing, for example, like the water who act as an I.O. Actually, there's a difference between these two real points. If the government officials, especially the one who's in the security issues who act as I.O., it creates such a difference, like the representative from you are saying, like ECT, they issue the announcement and make their own decisions for allocation of the funding. This is a conflict of interest. So if the government officials, especially in the security field, act as an I.O., this is the problem. Where's the problem lies? It's different than the people doing it themselves. I really want to rest this point. The government officials should not be involved in any way about this kind of I.O. They need to be really impartial. And this is the perspective I would like to live with about the roles of the government officials. They need to really be, the last minute, please, because I see the organizer already saying something. Just the last point. Last minute, one minute only. I echo what Kun Pong said. We need to take a look at the Indonesian model, not about I.O., about the conflict of interest that you rest. That's what we should have one body who monitor, oversee the ECT. They call that what's true. They receive the budget directly from the state, not through the ECT. The budget will be sent directly to this big body that would handle the work on your overseeing. So it would be the check and balance between these two organizations. So please, if you have time, study on this. Thank you. I encourage you to study my country's experience because there's good and bad in there. So have a look. My question is to Konawa Wood. I noticed that you paid zero to Facebook because you haven't placed any ads. But then you admit that your supporters have placed content on Facebook because it's user-generated content, right? Do you consider that as an in-kind contribution then to your political parties? And if so, do you report it? This is actually a legal gap, loohol. It is a huge loohol, actually. Part of it is good for the party because then the framework for the money support is very small. I have looked at this. You know, if we actually have the money that the people contribute to us might be even more than 100 million. But in the election law, it says that if there are people who are not the party themselves or the candidate themselves, if they distribute information in the media and the amount is less than 10,000 baht, it is considered as follow one, the party do not have to report this to the ECT. And two, it's considered as the application of their liberty or rights. There has been one case that has been since the Fast Forward Party. There was one inspector who created a clip before the election. The production is really good. The cost was about 300,000 or 400,000. If so, then we have to report it to the ECT. The move for our party, the team is the same team as the Fast Forward Party. That's me. We consider and study the law when we were setting up the Fast Forward Party and we were affected. So we had to set up a strategy. So it came out as a user generated content. The ECT may amend the law in order to be more inclusive. But from my own view, I think that if you write it like that, it's good for the political parties because then you can cut down the cost for campaigning. But if in the future ECT may consider that any cost that is incurred for canvassing votes, even though it's voluntary from the public, must be all calculated, then it can be understood. But it must be under two criteria. First, you must expand the amount of funding that is allowed for electoral campaign, not 44 million anymore. It should be 100 million. And second, the ECT, how would it ECT determine the measures so that it doesn't become a burden, an undue burden to the political parties because, say for example, if they canvass votes for free for us, if it's user generated content by the public, and then the political party has to report, how can you do it so that it does not become a burden? Because any report, you have to include your ID card, you have to sign everything, you have to calculate the amount of money, seven or eight pages per spending. So we actually discussed this and we said, for example, hypothetical example, if there is like one million people who canvass votes for us, and I have to do like one million report, how can we live then? We won't be able to work. That's it. Thank you. Thank you very much. So I think this panel has actually given you a lot of thoughts and a variety of views. From the move forward party, from political party, secondly, from the academician view from Mahidon University, and from rewatch, right? So thank you so much for our panel. For such an interesting panel, I think we were meant to be here for one and a half hours. We are here for two and a half hours. Obviously, it was a very, very interesting and exciting and invigorating discussion, so thanks a lot for that. And before we leave, I'd like our regional director for Asia, the Pacific Lina, Rikila Damank, to give us closing remarks, and post that we have some closing coffee and some snacks before we all go and enjoy our weekend. Thank you very much. We are clearly quite over time, so thank you, everyone, for sticking around. Much appreciated. And as I anticipated, the Thailand story online campaigning really brought about some interesting new insights and lessons for broader debate. We learned that indeed money alone doesn't guarantee the success of online campaign, nor does it guarantee your electoral win. And if the Philippines is often considered the sort of basin zero when it comes to disseminating this information to digital means, we also learned that in Thailand and perhaps due to some rather strict electoral laws also criticized at times, where playing a role in curbing some of the mission information, disinformation, violating the elections, albeit such messages then came about after the elections. But at the same time, we learned how there are some new risks clearly in Horizon and several interesting new topics for further research was mentioned. In the morning, we spoke about the political finance reports, and I think what I gathered from the inputs and feedback was that we had managed to cover the critical issues and cover the ground, and the recommendations were mostly endorsed, although, importantly, there was also different news on some of the recommendations, and I felt there that we probably would have needed a bit more time to really go through the recommendations so that we would have heard the different groups, different political parties' news on those recommendations and what to do about them. But there are obviously other opportunities to continue the debate. We have now the data, we have the analysis, we have the recommendations, and obviously, one next step is to share that also with the Election Commission of Thailand, with political decision makers, and also continue our discussions. So if I may request your help in disseminating the findings of the reports so that there is more awareness of the existence, and so that different also advocacy groups, civil society, academia, political parties can take advantage and make use of those recommendations in the work that will unfold in the coming months. Perhaps we need a TikTok video on the recommendations on political finance regulations in Thailand. Simply lastly, to thank you all so very much for being with us today. Thank you all the speakers and presenters, moderators. Thank you very much. Thank you everyone who contributed from the floor and by attending or asking questions and all that. I hope you had also interesting conversations during the COVID-19 breaks and lunch hour. Thank you so much, Tanapan, Khushu, Adi, for putting this all together. Thank you also for all the technical team, for the streaming, for helping us to stream this to the wider world. And last but not least, a very big shout out to our wonderful interpreters who allowed us to understand each other better through a true act of democracy in action. Thank you so much and let's have a coffee. Thank you everyone.