Consultant on Human Rights and Media in Thailand

Result of Service Performance Indicators

• Tasks completed to a satisfactory standard
• High quality of drafting, including attention to detail

• Consultant incorporates comments and inputs in a timely manner

  Work Location Bangkok

  Expected duration 15 May to 31 December 2022.

  Duties and Responsibilities The consultant will be responsible for identifying and collecting information in certain contexts and describing influence operations in Thailand, including:

• Initiatives directly attacking key civil society actors and organizations (such as human rights defenders, journalists, and CSOs).
• Initiatives aimed at undermining human rights reporting of human rights violations and advocacy in respective country contexts.
• This will be done through monitoring, research, compilation and analysis of data and information collected, and the presentation of two reports (one interim and one final report) which will include: o Preservation of evidence, such as screenshots, as well as more profound preservation using Dev or the Web Archive; o Actor/account level analysis, examining the accounts propagating the attacks as well as any associated accounts; o Network level analysis, examining the community of accounts propagating the attack; o Content level analysis, examining the discourse and the provenance of the content; o Multi-platform analysis, examining whether the attack exists on other social media or in search of evidence of coordination in other webfora; o Notes on methodology and suggested improvements.

The final report will be built on an initial interim report, and will generate information on: - key findings of the meta-analysis; - useful lessons learned and good practices; - clear and actionable recommendations (to reviewed by the SEARO country focal point, SEARO focal point on digital democratic space, METS technology focal point and the Civic Space Unit for feedback before finalization; and - comments on next steps and abstraction from the incidents uncovered in terms of trends and patterns. The consultant will also contribute to one or more presentations for discussion of the main findings within OHCHR (by video conference).

Supervision The primary supervision of the consultant’s work will be with the SEARO country focal point with a second-line reporting to the SEARO focal point on digital democratic space who is responsible for the overall facilitation and coordination of the consultancy and project. METS and the Civic space team in Geneva will provide support, advice and guidance required on all aspects related to technology and methodology.

Qualifications/special skills Academic Qualifications: Advanced degree on journalism, international law, politics, social science, or other related field. Experience: Minimum of three years of experience conducting research in the fields of technology or human rights and media in Thailand.

Direct experience researching on the impact of Information Operations (IO) in Thailand.

Qualitative research skills an advantage.

Special skills: Knowledge of interpreting data from social media (Twitter and Facebook). Language: English and French are the working languages of the United Nations Secretariat. For the position advertised, fluency both oral and written in English and Thai are required.

No Fee THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CHARGE A FEE AT ANY STAGE OF THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS (APPLICATION, INTERVIEW MEETING, PROCESSING, OR TRAINING). THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CONCERN ITSELF WITH INFORMATION ON APPLICANTS’ BANK ACCOUNTS.