THE THAI AUDIENCES’ RESPONSES TOWARD HOMOSEXUAL PORTRAYAL IN MEDIA: A CASE STUDY OF THAI TV SERIES

Abstract

TV series has become part of our lives whether for educational, entertainment or social revelation purposes. With the new contents being added and introduced each and every year by producers to make the production more interesting and refreshing to the audiences. Homosexual characters and context have been incorporated into the contents where they have become new trend in each production and challenges for the producers, regardless of how unpopular and prejudicing they were in the first stage. In curiosity and deep interest to the emergence of homosexual contents being made in media, the researcher has decided to conduct this study to find out how audiences have responded to the portrayal of homosexuality in Thai media, specifically TV series.

The aim of this research is to figure out the truthful responses of audiences towards the depiction of homosexual characters and lives in the society of whether it is being portrayed realistically or stereotyped and that will their responses are being positive, neutral or negative towards those portrayal. The quantitative method was articulated using the questionnaire to investigate 128 Thai participants. Result of Pearson- Moment Correlation revealed that there is no significant relationship between the frequency of exposure towards LGBTs portrayal to the three types of responses. While, results of T- test illustrated that there is a significant relationship between social norms and the negotiated response. While there are partial significant differences between the attitude and knowledge towards LGBTs portrayal in TV series and the three types of responses.