southern Thailand12 has been rooted in the multicultural and multi-ethnic social structure in the borderland of southern Thailand (Horstmann, 2001). McCargo (2006) defines the persisting conflict between Thai Buddhists and Malay Muslims in the border provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat as two closely related wars: “a battle for control of territory; and a battle for 'hearts and minds', a psychological war between different parties to the physical conflict, and between competing ideas of identity and nation-hood” (Ibid., p. 23). In Thailand, where “the state manipulated Buddhism in order to subordinate citizens” (McCargo, 2004, p. 167), Buddhism serves as a source of identity and provides the ground for nation-building (McCargo, 2004). A unifying “Thai-ness” of the Buddhist majority, especially contrasts with the strong social polarization and the significantly weaker degree of nationalization in the political party system (Croissant & Schächter, 2008). The persistent conflict in the southern borderlands is symptomatic of the Buddhist supremacy in Thai politics and the bias of the media towards it (Kularb, 2016; McCargo, 2006). Additionally, the persistent conflict between progressive urban “Bangkok” elites (yellow shirts) and the traditional rural Thaksin Shinawatra supporters (red shirts) splits society into either “red” or “yellow”, which makes its way into the polarized online and offline media (Sombatpoonsiri, 2018). This has resulted in several street protests with hundreds of deaths, where this deeply polarized media often took on a leading role in a media war “full of imagery and symbolism” (Forsyth 2010: 466). In reference to the southern conflict, Phansasiri Kularb (personal communication, 3 March, 2017) stresses the significance of a communication policy by officials called “information operation” which is similar to what experts report from Myanmar, and is which is also marked by racism and supremacy of religious norms and values: [T]he military call [it] information operation I.O. So, basically what happens in the south, that is very similar to the situation in Myanmar, is that some of the soldiers or some of the military officers will have some fake accounts, Facebook accounts or Twitter accounts, and follow civil society organizations’ websites or medium and make some countering comments on that, so kind of like mixing up a little bit the discussion so it would not sway towards their purpose only; (…) kind of like proposing opponent views, I mean opposing the user with another side of the story. But it’s not fake per se. But again, it’s not something that would give you a different perspective. (P. Kularb, personal communication, 3 March, 2017) This mirrors a form of “patriotic trolling” that Sombatpoonsiri critically analyses for Thailand’s and the Philippine´s manipulation of online spheres (Sombatpoonsiri, 2018). Due to the deep polarization into “red” and “yellow”, according to interviewees, Thai citizens seem to often be blind to any but their own political standpoints, and media reporting tends to be highly partisan (either red or yellow), non-investigative, uncritical and propagandistic. Interviewed                                                                                                                         12 For a closer read about the Thai southern conflict and related communication practices see: McCargo 2006 and Kularb 2016.   81 | Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia, Vol. 18, No.2