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Activists fight back using ICTs

  • JASS

How activists use the internet to fight back? Though the space [for activism] is shrinking, we have the tools and there are opportunities. We can find ways to exercise our rights online and raise our voices again and again,” says Ritu Srivastava of the Digital Empowerment Campaign. Across the world, women are using information and communications technologies (ICTs) to amplify rights agendas, tell their own stories and tackle emerging issues such as access to technology. In Africa, women writers and organizers are using the internet, radio, and other ICTs to throw open the door for wider and more diverse representation of voices in the media and to challenge the status quo. African women are breaking the silence and stigma about violence, sex and sexuality on the net in ways that was never possible in traditional environments.Ā  Women members of parliament use social media to promote their political agendas. Rural women access market prices via mobile phones.

Activists are using ICTs to make their movements and base of support bigger, connect their offline (face-to-face) organizing with online activism to get their voices heard and make a difference beyond their localities. For example, the Keep Saartjie Baartman Centre Open e-campaign, in which feminists at Saartjie Baartman Centre and the African Gender Institute of the University of Cape Town worked in solidarity to publicize the Centreā€™s financial crisis and save a vital resource for women and children survivors of violence from closure.

A continuum of violence against womenā€¦

SNA ICT ToolkitAs exciting as these advances in technology are, they are not without challenges or complexity. The forms of violence that women face on the streets are replicated ā€œonline” in more insidious ways. Often, these risks and violence are not recognized as part of a continuum between womenā€™s offline and online lives. The ICTs for Feminist Movement Building Activist ToolkitĀ was developed by JASS, the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and Womenā€™sNet as a resource to help activists to identify the opportunities ICTs offer while navigating the risks and challenges they present Ā creatively and safely.Ā 

It doesnā€™t matter who you are. [Whether you are a] famous journalist or well-known celebrityā€”you can be targeted because [youā€™re] culturally or socially doing something ā€˜wrong.ā€™ Whether it is wearing something that ā€˜provokes men to rapeā€™, wearing too-revealing clothes or being outspoken online.” – Ritu Srivastava, Digital Empowerment Campaign

ICTs, particularly online platforms and chat circles, are being used as to shame, silence and ā€œmake examples” of women often in highly sexualized and gender-specific ways. For example, in 2013, a video of a young Zimbabwean woman having sex with a male partner in front of her four-year old sonĀ went viral on Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, and other social media. The video prompted commentators across the Internet to claim that this woman was ā€œshameless” and ā€œunfit as a mother”ā€”she bore the brunt of this abuse and moral censure, while her male partner escaped mostly unscathed. Further afield, Farid Ahmadi, an internet cafĆ© owner from Afghanistan, has encountered over fifty complaints from young women with a common thread, ā€œfake Facebook profiles using their photos, hacked personal information, inboxes deluged with pornography, and violent threats from aggressive suitors and alleged militants.” This form of defamation in a context like Afghanistan can endanger a womanā€™s life, although the subtleties of how cultural differences and fundamentalisms impact womenā€™s experiences of ICTs are often overlooked.

For some people, these incidents are unremarkable. But itā€™s not just women who are facing these challenges in their every-day use of ICTs but womenā€™s rights activists as well. In fact, for activists who are challenging gender inequities and social norms, and speaking out against these troubling trends toĀ  name them explicitly as violence, abuse and harassment, the backlash can be swift and vicious both offline and online. On October 9, APC and Take Back the Techā€™s collaborative campaign to reclaim technology was targeted by people who self-associate with #Gamergate. The Gamergaters hijacked the hashtags #takebackthetech and #imaginingafeministinternet, flooding the conversation with over 20,000 tweets and memes containing racist, violent, misogynistic and abusive expression. Ā Just weeks later, South by Southwest, the annual film, media and music festival held in Austin, Texas, received criticism for canceling two panels on video gaming due to ā€˜threats of on-site violence.ā€™ One of the panels, ā€˜Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games,ā€™ featured women who had previously been the targets of harassment for criticizing sexism in the video game industry.

ā€œLetā€™s think about women in online spaces who are talking about VAW, their issues and rights in relation to their gender, sexuality, LGBT, sex workers. [In India]ā€¦ you can count them on your fingers,” says Ritu Srivastava. ā€œWhat happens in those spaces, particularly online spacesā€”hate speech comes to you, harassment, abusive language, threats and intimidation. It may not be physical but it is psychological and it is real, and it can become so much that a defender will choose to leave that space.”

Using ICTs to Fight Back

SNA ICT Toolkit - 2Nevertheless, women and many marginalized communities are harnessing ICTs to expose violence and corruption and be hear d while keeping themselves safe. In South Africa, a sex worker detained and threatened by a police officer used his cell phone to record the incident and later used the recording to seek justice. The Pink Chaddhi campaign in India used Facebook to mobilize thousands of people to speak out against attacks on women for ā€œdisrespecting Indian culture” by being out and drinking publicly. Tapping into the frustration that women felt in the wake of the attacks, the campaign blazed a trail for other organizations to use Facebook to organize locally.

Many of us feel isolated in our unhappiness with right-wing groups of any religion disrupting our way of life. This campaign was aimed to protest the climate of fear created by right wing groups in Mangalore. And to an extent we have succeeded in creating a dent ā€“ giving people a sense of hope.” –Ā Pink Chaddhi Campaign organizerĀ Ā 

APC, Take Back the Tech and a wide range of organizations are carving out spaces for dialogue on what it means to create a feminist internet: an internet that is safe and secure for everyone. For activists, many of the threats that come with using ICTs to mobilize in great numbers are not going to disappear. Similarly, the need to take advantage of the opportunities ICTs presentā€”to open the lid on the issues that no one wants to talk about like sex, sexuality and violence and amplify womenā€™s voices to build movements for changeā€”is that much more pressing. ICTs for Feminist Movement Building Activist Toolkit does not have all the answers, but it is a resource to help activists grapple with some of these critical questions and communicate for maximum impact and reach.

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