iSchool Capstone

Internet censorship in Thailand: User reactions, potential vulnerabilities, and necessary responses

Project tags:

information assurance & cybersecurity

information behavior & user research

social media

Research Award
Project poster

Thailand’s Internet censorship regime poses dire threats not only to users’ access to information, but also to their ability to safely create and disseminate content. In addition to high-risk users like journalists and dissidents, regular users are increasingly victims of the military government’s capricious enforcement of Internet regulations. Through bilingual data from 229 online surveys and 12 in-depth interviews, I find that users face unresolved information problems related to incorrect assessment of the actors and mechanisms behind blocked content, risky censorship circumvention tools from unreliable sources, and peer informants and government monitoring on social media. These results highlight users’ main points of vulnerability, and point to technical responses needed to protect them. Beyond recommendations to the academic computer security community and easy-to-understand guidelines for Thai Internet users, this project informs the development of safer, more secure strategies to resist Internet censorship and surveillance in any setting.

Project participants:

Genevieve Gebhart

MLIS