2023-2024: Research Fellow, Building Civic Society Capacities Against Government Weaponization of Anti-Fake News Laws in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines, Luminate Foundation and National Endowment for Democracy
2023-2024: Country coordinator, Cybertroops and Computational Propaganda: A Comparative Study of Public Opinion Manipulation, in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), funded the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Since 2020: Assistant professor and Project Lead, Monitoring Centre on Organised Violence Events in Thailand, Chulalongkorn University & UNDP Thailand; Mapping and Mitigating Digital Harassment against Human Rights Defenders in Thailand, Swiss Embassy, Thailand
March-June 2021: Research Fellow, the impact of Covid-19 on civil society space, Trendanalysen, BMZ
Since 2/2018: Associate at the GIGA Institute of Asian Studies
2012-2019: Assistant Professor, Faculty of Political Science, Thammasat University
Education: Doctor of Philosophy in Politics and International Relations, La Trobe University, Australia
Current Research
Civic activism, social movements, digital activism
Governments and tech companies worldwide periodically clash over what content is acceptable to post online and who gets to decide. As states exert legal, economic, and political pressure on social media platforms and users to control online conversations, the platforms frequently seek to push back.
Anti-fake news lawfare is deepening government control over civil society, undermining information integrity and civil society’s democratic rights. Patterns to this legal repression and related pushback strategies in South and Southeast Asia are examined, as the forerunners of global developments.
This chapter explores the multidirectional relationships between civil society and autocratization. On the one hand, democratization studies generally conceive civil society as a crucial driver for democratic transition and consolidation. On the other hand, skeptics argue against the invariable characterization of civil society as a democratic force.
This article examines how digital repression tactics—surveillance, prosecution against online activists, and influence campaigns—work in tandem to contain dissent. I applied a mechanism-based approach to analyze interactive patterns of digital repression amidst Thailand’s 2020–2021 protests.
Digital repression facilitates ruling elites’ control over online dissent. Southeast Asia’s civil society has managed to counter this using three tactics: protests and legal action, knowledge- and capacity-building activities, and alliances with domestic policymakers and cross-border civic networks.
Governments in autocratic and autocratizing contexts may use anti-fake news laws to discredit critical civil society actors as agents of “disinformation” and punish them. Through comparative and cross-learning insights derived from field studies, we seek to map civil society responses against the autocratic use of disinformation laws and strengthen policies for right to information and freedom of speech and expression. NED, 2023-2025
In an age of proliferating disinformation, governments in South and Southeast Asia have come out with anti-fake news laws. However, the “weaponization" of such laws can lead governments to control online platforms and censor critics. Our project examines the patterns and processes of the weaponization of such laws against civic actors and countermeasures by the latter. We aim for academic and policy outcomes to improve disinformation regulation while safeguarding digital rights. Luminate, 2023-2024
In Thailand hat das Verfassungsgericht den aktuellen Premierminister aus dem Amt gehoben. Die Entscheidung könnte das Land in eine tiefe Krise stürzen. GIGA-Forscherin Janjira Sombatpoonsiri mit Einschätzungen zu den aktuellen Entwicklungen
The interactive sessions of this workshop focused on knowledge sharing, discussions on cross-regional trends and collaboration, and strategies for countering anti-fake news lawfare.
At this workshop, participants discussed patterns and trends of anti-fake news laws, digital/social media platforms and anti-fake news measures, ways of regulating mis/disinformation, and civil society pushback strategies.
