Paper Title
Wat Arun as Language: Representations of Thailand on TAT’s Social Media
Abstract
The study for this paper aimed to analyze the use of Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn)aslanguage to construct representations of Thailand on the official website and social media accounts of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT). The theory of representation was adopted as a theoretical framework.The study found that Wat Arun is usedas a language in TAT’s logo, montages and the scenes or background of promotional posters and clips combined with words, sound tracks, objects, along with other figures to construct two representations of Thailand on TAT’s social media accounts:1)a land of rivers and 2) a civilized land with advanced technology.The latter representation is a result of the Covid-19 pandemic being a hindrance to travel, hence advanced technology played a role in online or virtual travel.
Keywords – Wat arun (Temple of Dawn); Representations of Thailand; Social Media; Tourism authority of Thailand(TAT).