Roles of Folk Media in Promoting Tourism of Talad Kow Hong Community Amphoe Bang Plama, Suphanburi.

Abstract

This research was to analyze the roles of using folk media in promoting tourism and to find the guideline in using media to promote tourism. The research used Talad Kow Hong community , Amphoe Bang Plama, Suphanburi Province as the study site as it was an important tourist resource because of its historical significance and there were some interesting phenomena of using folk media in line of semiotics. The research results reveal that folk media had the content reflecting 3 semiotic forms: first - those of historical traces such as archaic sites and artifacts and the legends transmitted through generations; second-the long-standing cultural values such as the traditional mode of production and old styled architecture still perpetuate, and the last-the social values such as the Thai-Chinese relationship and the strong hold of societal traditions. All of these were embedded in the folk media. In regard to the forms of signification, it was found that the folkmedia signified mainly through hidden messages. One had to rely on in-depth interpretation of the information along with the social contexts to gain understanding of their valid meaning. Besides, it was also found that there were some uses of semiotic components to compose the message to be communicated as well. One of additional issues found was that the values and the meanings conveyed through the community’s folk media semiotic signs were significantly related and relevant to tourism.