From Exception to Administration: Coup Normalization in Thai Newspaper Discourse

Abstract

This article examines how post-coup governance in Thailand gradually acquired continuity and familiarity within newspaper discourse following the 2014 military coup, despite the persistence of political contestation, criticism, and competing interpretations. Existing scholarship on coups and media has primarily focused on the causes of military intervention, processes of legitimation, or institutional consequences. Less attention has been paid to how post-coup political orders become normalized within public discourse while antagonistic political narratives remain present. The study adopts a Processual Critical Discourse Analysis grounded in a post-structural understanding of discourse. The analysis draws on news coverage from five Thai national daily newspapers - Thai Rath, Daily News, Khao Sod, Matichon, and ASTV Manager Daily - published between 22 May 2014 and 6 September 2015. News reports were selected according to their analytical relevance to the coup, National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) governance, political reform, economic recovery, public order, and counter-discursive challenges. An analytical corpus of 150 news reports was constructed and examined through coding, pattern identification, mechanism analysis, and temporal comparison. The findings demonstrate that the normalization of the coup did not result from political consensus or the disappearance of conflict. Rather, it emerged through the gradual convergence of discourses surrounding governance, reform, economic management, and social order. These discursive formations were repeatedly reproduced and increasingly occupied a dominant position within the field of public visibility. Counter-discourses continued to exist throughout the period under study, yet remained fragmented and were unable to consistently disrupt the emerging discursive stability. The article argues that this process is best understood as normalization without consensus - a form of discursive stabilization through which post-coup governance becomes familiar and routinized despite the continued presence of political antagonism.