Feminist reflections on internet policies

The hallowed halls of academia, meaningless standards of rigour determine who can be a researcher. Would it be possible to truly undertake independent research outside of the aegis and agendas of institutions.

What is the place of memory in research? What happens when researchers hold fragile links to the past for a community? How can we pleasantly complicate our ideas around research and writing by including the role of memories - that of those being researched and our own as well.

Research is often meant for lofty objectives of ensuring policy change, and at at the very least, it should do no harm. But what if your research is about violence - and what risks do we run when asking participants to revisit their trauma and hurt that they experienced because of online violence.

What are the complications that identity can produce in research? And when can it be fruitful - can we design solutions and technology keeping in mind the diversity of people, and seeking particularly to include those voices often less heard in technology design.

Research on social media, particularly relying on public and semi-public data shared by people, raises uncomfortable questions about privacy of people and their consent to being part of a research project. What questions of consent does a feminist lens on this subject raise?

Women are being recognised as consumers of pornography increasingly which potentially can change how compulsory heterosexuality and gender stereotypes are embedded in media. Here we explore the contradictions between women consuming porn and sexual violations of female performers, and how do we then understand, research and talk about consumption of pornography.

Community networks provide alternatives to infrastructure to access internet that is controlled by either companies or the state. In the remote area where Kondoa Community Network works, even patchy services have been helpful to ensure access to better education and medical services. 

How we organise around shared causes and beliefs has changed with the internet. This piece looks at how the internet allows leadership to be decentralised, and a response to the idea that the age of influencers is necessarily a bad thing.

The Asia Pacific Internet Governance Forum just completed in July 2019 and it took place in Russia. There were very few sessions that dealt with either gender or human rights and none that addressed sexuality. At one session there were discussions on the ICT related-laws and particularly on the broad and unclear provisions that deal with online censorship.

Privacy rights are becoming increasingly important and especially in the context of increasing datafication. Shmyla Khan of Digital Rights Foundation in Pakistan talks about the ways in which privacy rights are relevant, used and abused in the lives of women and gender diverse people.

What is the extraordinary power of storytelling and art when it comes to the liberation of personhood and sexuality. Here we explore the domino effect of telling our stories and hearing others.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and others (LGBTI+) people across the world face varying levels of discrimination, exclusion, precarity, violence and phobia. Our difference seems to cancel out the possibility of empathy.

Can policy and law accommodate genders that are not confined by the binaries or are fluid? Spaces around governance often display an acute dysphasia and inability to comprehend what lies beyond and between categories, especially of gender.

In Eastern Europe there is a spread of anti-gender discourse and in this context the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex (LGBTI) people is precarious. This article explores the protection for free speech, religion and for LGBTI rights in Poland. 

For some of us pleasure in our work is possible, even if it is to find the breaking and bending points in the institutions of policy and law. But even though political and particularly feminist frameworks make space for pleasure, where is the space for that in legal or policy language at the international or national level?

An essential read about how design justice could be an incomparable tool to address discriminations towards transgender, intersex and gender diverse people. More broadly the series explores the injustices that could result from algorithmic decision making and the preponderance of artificial intelligence based mechanisms.

The internet is made up of many kinds of spaces knitted together - from the public to somewhat private to the many grey zones in between. Here is how queer black people find public corners for celebrating and self-care through Finstas.

In this podcast by Tiff and Manda, they explore what is happening when the internet enters the worlds(s) of lesbian, bisexual, queer women and others. Does it open up possibilities of those sliding into our DMs or can it be risky and even dangerous to be openly LGBTQI online.