Written by: Nada Chaiyajit and Christopher S. Walsh
Abstract: In addition to growing epidemics of HIV among men that have sex with men (MSM) and transgenders in Thailand, a low awareness of how to access justice increases their vulnerability. This paper presents unique case studies of how two community-based and led organisations used social networking and instant messaging to address this problem. It describes and analyses how online peer-based HIV education and prevention was integrated with access to justice through free university-based clinical legal education (CLE). It argues that re-designing HIV prevention and education through digital technologies with marginalised gay men, other men that have sex with men (MSM) and transgenders is a sustainable community-based and led approach. Furthermore digital media offer strategic opportunities to overcome on-going political violence alongside entrenched stigma and discrimination that disrupt denial of access to justice for populations disproportionately at risk of HIV.
Keywords: clinical legal education (CLE), community research, HIV and AIDS, online peer outreach and prevention (OPOP), gay men, other men that have sex with men (MSM), mobile phones, social justice, transgender, Thailand