The channels are there, the trust is not: what Thailand's 2026 news data tells public communicators

Whenever there is an important announcement, many government agencies do the same thing: they post it on their Facebook page and consider the job done. As a choice of channel, that is not wrong. Facebook really is where most Thais get their news.

But the latest data tells us something more important. Thais are on all of those channels, and they believe less of what they see there.

Thais are on every social channel

A Reuters Institute and YouGov survey from January to February 2026 found that 69% of Thai internet users get news on Facebook, followed by TikTok at 55% and YouTube at 54%. [1] What about the chat app most of us use every day? Take a guess first.

LINE, which most of us think of as a chat app, is used for news by 45%. These figures confirm what public communicators already know. People are not waiting for news on an agency's website. They get it in the same place where they talk to their families and watch entertainment clips.

But trust in news is falling

In the same survey, overall trust in news among Thais stood at 47% in 2026, down from 55% the year before and the lowest figure in the six years of data (2021–2026) [2].

Put simply, at the moment information reaches people faster than ever, more than half of them do not say they trust most of the news they get. For a government agency, that means “we posted it” is still a long way from “people believed it and acted”.

Trust is not only about the platform

Another dataset is worth thinking about. A Rakuten Insight survey in May 2025 asked Thais which sources of information and news they trust. Television was trusted by 74% and social media platforms by 64%, but messaging platforms by only 17% [3].

This comes from a different survey, so it cannot be compared directly with the figures above. It still points to something interesting: many people get news through chat apps without trusting chat apps as a source of news.

As we see it, one possible explanation is that trust in these spaces is tied not to the platform but to the person who sends the message. A message from a village head everyone knows and a forwarded image of an announcement with no known origin sit in the same app, yet they are not trusted equally.

We have seen officials working on flood prevention receive an official notice from a higher office, post an image of the whole page on Facebook, and consider the information published. The channel was right and the information was right, but no one actually told residents what they needed to do that night.

Three things agencies can do right away

1. 1

   Give the message a real speaker

   When trust in news is falling, a purely official voice has to work even harder. Let the officer who actually handles the issue speak, with a name and a face, in the language people use locally.

2. 2

   Prepare messages that intermediaries can pass on easily

   With nearly half of Thais getting news on LINE, a message that a village head, a village health volunteer or a teacher can copy straight into a group chat is a channel that carries the sender's trust along with the information.

3. 3

   State the next step in the first sentence

   “What to do, where and when” should be readable before people scroll past. An image of a full-page document is not the answer.

Reading this data with care

The Reuters Institute and Rakuten Insight data both come from online surveys, so they mainly reflect people who use the internet. They may not cover older people or those in remote areas with little internet access, who are often the very groups government agencies most need to reach. For them, communicating through trusted people in the community matters even more.

The channels are ready. What is missing is people

The 2026 data does not tell government agencies to stop using social media. On the contrary, the public is already there. But when trust in news is falling, appearing on the right channel is no longer enough. Information travels only when someone people trust carries it.

If your organisation is looking for ways to make its messages reach further and be more trusted, the Center of Excellence in Communication Innovation at Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Communication Arts would be glad to talk and share what we have learned.