THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE EIGHTH (2020) AND NINTH (2021) EDITIONS OF THE MISS GRAND INTERNATIONAL IN RECONSTRUCTING THE IMAGE THAILAND: A QUANTITATIVE MEASUREMENT BASED ON THE PERCEPTION AND INTEREST OF INDONESIAN

Abstract

The late 2019 and year 2020 were considered as one of the most historical periods for a country named Thailand. In those years, not only the country had to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, but its government also had to face another level of struggle, namely to deal with significant turmoil due to the discontent of its people. As the news media said, public discontent in Thailand was reported to cause prolonged protests against the Thai government. At that hard time, many Thai people (especially the pro-democracy group) were seen taking to the streets to voice their demands while raising their 3 fingers. This sign was known to represent the three main demands that they had in mind which include the dismissal of Prayuth Chan-O-Cha as the prime minister of Thailand, the amendment of the country’s constitution, and the reformation of the Thai monarchy. Even though all issues could still be managed in the end, unfortunately, they left a negative image for the country in the eyes of international audiences, one of which is Indonesian. For example, due to this prolonged event, the state was seen by foreigners as a conflictual and less safe country to visit. Entering a new stage when tensions were reported to have eased, Thailand was known to host two international events in 2021, namely beauty pageants. Under the Miss Grand International Organization (MGIO), Thailand began to improve its negative image through the eighth (2020) and ninth (2021) editions of the Miss Grand International (MGI) competition. Deriving from this, the two editions of the MGI can be considered as the approach used by Thailand in achieving its national interests. Based on these narratives, this thesis is aimed to discover the significance level of the used approach in achieving Thailand’s national interest. In the writing of this thesis, the quantitative approach with a specific mathematical formula is used as the method of measurement. In this case, the author utilizes both primary and secondary data as the main source of analysis. In addition, the author also dissects three major concepts of diplomacy in this thesis namely public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, and beauty diplomacy. However, to make this thesis more specific, only cultural diplomacy is used as the main approach to the analysis. To achieve the objective of this thesis, the author starts by explaining the conduct of the eighth (2020) and ninth (2021) editions of the MGI in Thailand and assesses its significance level based on 100 data of online questionnaire obtained from two sub-population of Indonesian. In measuring the significance level, the author relies on both the perception and interest of the targeted population toward Thai culture, traditional costume, language, cuisine, tourism, people, quality of beauty pageant production, safety, infrastructure, and beauty products. In conclusion, this thesis discovered that the conduct of the two referred editions of the MGI has some positive implications for the reconstruction of the positive image of Thailand in the eyes of Indonesian with various significant levels in each aspect being asked and a medium level of significance in the overall ten aspects measured.