imagine a feminist internet

Surveillance powers of the state and corporations are escalating and are hugely assisted by information technology. Under regimes of colonialism and patriarchy, women, minorities and all other subjects have experienced being surveilled, enumerated and categorised. There is a need to now relook at how gender is implicated in surveillance practices in the contemporary. In this resource, Internet…

In this column, Chenai Chair explores motivations of internet use through the ResearchICT Africa study in Rwanda, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. Business, local and global communication, social ties, and curiosity seem to be the main motivators. By understanding why people go online, we can better shape interventions for a connected society.

The purpose of this issue paper is to lay out the key legal, institutional and ethical issues concerning technology-mediated Violence against Women (VAW), to raise critical questions for further deliberation and action. This paper draws upon secondary literature in this area, and inputs from Indian feminist scholars and practitioners working in the domains of gender-based violence, women’s…

In April 2017 Facebook announced a new tool that will prevent an intimate image posted without consent from being shared further on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram. Erika Smith and Fungai Machirori go deep and debate the pros and cons of this proposed system, and how feminist-friendly and positive about alternate sexualities it is.

More than 1,500 business leaders, civil society advocates, policy makers, lawyers, bloggers, technologists, and users participated in RightsCon Brussels 2017 (March) and there were over 250 sessions related to human rights and technology. Serene Lim explores the ways in which inequity was addressed at the forum, and how exclusion and marginalisation were framed in various sessions.

The gender balance is far from equal even in progressive movements such as the free and open source software community, Mozilla user groups, and others. Despite all the rivers of ink that were written about the gender imbalance in these areas, the changes are slow to arrive.

Pokémon exploded as a game that could be played on mobile phones in 2016. Of the many debates around it, Angélica Contreras explores the gendered aspect of videogames and how Pokémon struck a chord with many women in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and parts of Latin America. This article was originally written in Spanish, and is part of a column series that explores young women and their lives…

The Internet Freedom Festival is refreshingly different from most forums around internet rights and technology - it is almost equal in gender ratio, welcoming of gender non conforming and trans persons, and takes privacy of its participants at the venue seriously. Smita Vanniyar tells us more about their experience at the festival this year in Valencia, Spain.

'Interpreting the internet: Feminist and Queer Counterpublics in Latin America by Elisabeth Jay Friedman looks at a decade long engagement of feminist and women's movements with technology. Alan Finlay reviews the book for GenderIT.org, and finds it to be essential reading for anyone interested in how feminist (or any) counterpublics are formed and shaped by appropriating whatever technology is…

 

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Technomagical Fires to warm your hearts: IFF podcast

At the Internet Freedom Festival, Jac sm Kee interviews four amazing feminists from Latin America.