Feminist internet research network (FIRN) by Association for Progressive Communications (APC)
Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), 2023
Digital gender-based violence has been the topic of many studies in Türkiye, and yet only a few o... more Digital gender-based violence has been the topic of many studies in Türkiye, and yet only a few of those have evaluated the issue through a queer feminist perspective. The negative online experiences of LGBTQI+ are therefore often neglected. By uncovering these neglected experiences, the research explores the digital violence targeted against LGBTQI+ users. Through a mixed methodology, the study aims to understand the dynamics of digital gender-based violence. In a political context where laws act against gender equality and against the LGBTQI+ communities, the study offers possible strategies and recommendations to all the parties involved in the protection and prevention of digital violence including LGBTQI+ organisations, human rights organisations, the relevant digital platforms and the LGBTQI+ community as a whole.
Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), 2023
This research centres transgender, non-binary and gender-diverse (TNBGD) people’s experiences of ... more This research centres transgender, non-binary and gender-diverse (TNBGD) people’s experiences of online gender-based violence (OGBV) with the intention to challenge and reconceptualise current framings of OGBV. In order to do so, the research draws on experiences of TNBGD people living in Botswana, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda. This research builds a broader, more inclusive and intersectional framing of OGBV to imagine better protections for TNBGD people who largely continue to be excluded in interventions and responses to OGBV.
Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), 2022
This research intends to better understand the barriers and biases resulting from algorithms in w... more This research intends to better understand the barriers and biases resulting from algorithms in women’s access to freedom of opinion and expression, and to examine women’s resiliency and how they navigate these algorithms that are inherently limiting to create the much-needed space for women and gender non-conforming persons to speak out, to be heard, and to, in effect, occupy digital spaces.
Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), 2022
This paper analyzes some developments of an action research project cultivated with the quilombol... more This paper analyzes some developments of an action research project cultivated with the quilombolas residents from Ribeirão Grande/Terra Seca, which aimed at initiating a community network with an organization of women farmers to help foster their agroecological product sales. The essay begins contextualizing the quilombos, the actors involved in the project, as well as their political and methodological perspectives. Then it analyzes some positive and negative aspects of the project, and reflects on the importance of considering gender, race and colonialism as axes of oppressions present during community networks building. We share these reflections hoping that it can be useful for other community network activists, advocates and groups when it comes to their technological practices and methodologies in distinct territories.
Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), 2022
The meta-research project formed part of the broader FIRN project and created a feminist space fo... more The meta-research project formed part of the broader FIRN project and created a feminist space for dialogue to explore the complexities of doing internet research. This was done through the critical exploration of the research methodological processes and ethical practices of the eight FIRN research projects. The aim of the meta-research project was to bring FIRN project partners into conversation with each other through this report.
From the very beginning, the meta-research project understood that research on the internet is complex and that current methodological approaches and research tools are not sufficiently reflexive to account for “feminist thinking around dynamics of power, politics of location, relationship with participants, access to digital data and so on.”
Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), 2022
Out of all the topics identified in a mapping exercise, the white paper explores in depth eight t... more Out of all the topics identified in a mapping exercise, the white paper explores in depth eight topics in order to understand a feminist approach to these subjects, key areas of analysis and boundary pushing by feminist internet research, and opportunities for further research. The topics are access, expression, pleasure, online gender-based violence (GBV), surveillance, data and datafication, artificial intelligence and the digital economy.
The paper also outlines how gender and related thematic areas are discussed in internet policy spaces, with a focus on the global Internet Governance Forum (IGF), and offers recommendations for further research, ways of making and disseminating research, policy making and accountability, and funding priorities in accordance with the research.
Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), 2022
Platformization of domestic and personal services work has changed how tech forward, urban middle... more Platformization of domestic and personal services work has changed how tech forward, urban middle- and upper-class customers find workers, but it has changed little about the dynamic of the work being conducted. Continuing to use a feminist lens, we narrow our focus down to the app design and consider the interface and context of platfomised work.
We illuminate the values encoded in the interfaces created in platform-based domestic work, and highlight the power structures they uphold and break away from. The report is a result of our investigation at how workers navigate the rules and restrictions placed on them by the app's design and company policies. Using the Urban Company app as a case study, we show how platform design affects working conditions for workers.
Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), 2021
In Malaysia, and to some extent, globally, gender inequality is often and rightly addressed in te... more In Malaysia, and to some extent, globally, gender inequality is often and rightly addressed in terms of GBV and gender discriminatory impacts. However, the impact of gender inequality in relation to freedom of opinion and expression is largely unaddressed. A framework for an unrestrained freedom of opinion and expression means very little to women if it ignores the inherent unequal power dynamics in our access to human rights and equal protection under the law.
Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), 2020
The research focussed on lived online experiences of women living in five sub-Saharan African cou... more The research focussed on lived online experiences of women living in five sub-Saharan African countries, namely Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Senegal, and South Africa, illustrating that repeated negative encounters fundamentally impact how women navigate and utilise the internet. This, in turn, strengthens the argument for a radical shift in developing alternate digital networks grounded in feminist theory.
Authors: Neema Iyer, Bonnita Nyamwire and Sandra Nabulega
This work forms part of the APC 'Feminist Internet Research Network' project, supported by the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors.
Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), 2021
The project studies the entry of digital platforms into India’s domestic and care work sector. We... more The project studies the entry of digital platforms into India’s domestic and care work sector. We find that platforms rely on and amplify unequal structures of power that workers already experience. We use a feminist lens to critique platform modalities and orient platformisation dynamics in radically different, worker-first ways.
Hosted at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), the research was led by Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi, with Sumandro Chattapadhyay providing planning, editorial and project management support.
This work forms part of the APC 'Feminist Internet Research Network' project, supported by the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors.
Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), 2021
The research focuses on the effects of the heated campaign against the ratification of the Istanb... more The research focuses on the effects of the heated campaign against the ratification of the Istanbul Convention in Bulgaria in terms of gender-based violence. Since the internet played a key role in this stormy anti-gender backlash in 2018, this research report aimed at finding out how internet technologies facilitate or prevent gender-based violence (GBV) and how dominant anti-gender rights attitudes could be reversed with the help of internet communications.
The expert team of authors and contributors consisted of: Nikoleta Daskalova (research lead), Svetla Encheva, Rada Elenkova, Milena Kadieva, Pavel Antonov and Todor Yalamov. The cover illustration of this report was made by Betina Gankova.
This work forms part of the APC 'Feminist Internet Research Network' project, supported by the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors.
Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), 2021
Despite a progressive policy and telecom industry environment, there is a large gender gap in int... more Despite a progressive policy and telecom industry environment, there is a large gender gap in internet access in Rwanda. This study, conducted by Research ICT Africa (RIA) and partners at the University of Rwanda Centre of Gender Studies, combined quantitative and qualitative research to explore what socio-economic factors inhibit internet access for women in rural and urban settings.
Project Team:
Dr Araba Sey (Project lead)
Dr Alison Gillwald
Mariama Deen-Swarray
Naila Govan-Vassen
Chenai Chair
Field Team:
Dr Josephine Mukabera
Dr Innocent Iyakaremye
This research is part of the Feminist Internet Research Network project led by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), with funding from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors.
Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), 2021
Taking Latin America as a point of departure, as it is where we both as researchers and feminists... more Taking Latin America as a point of departure, as it is where we both as researchers and feminists originate from, this investigation seeks to contribute to the development of an anti-colonial feminist framework to question Artificial Intelligence systems that are being deployed by the public sector, particularly focused social welfare programs. Our ultimate goal is to develop arguments that enable us to build bridges for advocacy with different human rights groups, particularly feminists and LGBTIQ + groups, especially in Latin America, but not only. We hope that, in collectivity, we can foster conversations towards an overarching anti-colonial feminist critique to address governmental trends of adopting A.I. systems that are not only disregarding human rights implications but are also, once again, replicating heteropatriarchy, white supremacy and colonialism through neoliberal technosolutist narratives exported to the world by Silicon Valley.
Authors: Joana Varon, Paz Peña
This research is part of the Feminist Internet Research Network project led by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), with funding from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors.
Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), 2021
This action-research project envisages the implementation of a WiFi community network in quilombo... more This action-research project envisages the implementation of a WiFi community network in quilombo Terra Seca in the Vale do Ribeira region in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, while conducting a participatory research process on information and communication technologies, more specifically community networks, through an intersectional feminist lens.
Authors: Bruna Zanolli and Débora Prado
This work forms part of the APC 'Feminist Internet Research Network' project, supported by the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors.
Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), 2021
Anti-feminist discourse and sex panics are fundamental pieces of the current conservative turn in... more Anti-feminist discourse and sex panics are fundamental pieces of the current conservative turn in Brazilian politics, whose apex was the election of Jair Bolsonaro as President of the Republic in November 2018. We addressed the role of social media in public controversies over gender, sexuality and feminism in the period between the 2018 presidential election and the municipal elections in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Relentless attacks, whose semantics activate the intersection of gender, sexuality and race, often in the form of hate speech, operate as a form of political violence. Using mixed-methods, we analysed digital engagement with anti-rights discourse in the Brazilian social media sphere and assessed the impact of this hostile climate on feminists, LGBTIs and their allies, as well as their individual and collective responses.
Prepared by Horacio Sívori and Bruno Zilli
Research team
Social media: Tatiana Laai
Interviewer: Silvia Aguião
Digital methods: Fabio Gouveia
statistics: Eliane De Paula
This research is part of the Feminist Internet Research Network project led by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), with funding from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors.
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Feminist internet research network (FIRN) by Association for Progressive Communications (APC)
From the very beginning, the meta-research project understood that research on the internet is complex and that current methodological approaches and research tools are not sufficiently reflexive to account for “feminist thinking around dynamics of power, politics of location, relationship with participants, access to digital data and so on.”
The paper also outlines how gender and related thematic areas are discussed in internet policy spaces, with a focus on the global Internet Governance Forum (IGF), and offers recommendations for further research, ways of making and disseminating research, policy making and accountability, and funding priorities in accordance with the research.
We illuminate the values encoded in the interfaces created in platform-based domestic work, and highlight the power structures they uphold and break away from. The report is a result of our investigation at how workers navigate the rules and restrictions placed on them by the app's design and company policies. Using the Urban Company app as a case study, we show how platform design affects working conditions for workers.
Authors: Neema Iyer, Bonnita Nyamwire and Sandra Nabulega
This work forms part of the APC 'Feminist Internet Research Network' project, supported by the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors.
Hosted at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), the research was led by Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi, with Sumandro Chattapadhyay providing planning, editorial and project management support.
This work forms part of the APC 'Feminist Internet Research Network' project, supported by the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors.
The expert team of authors and contributors consisted of: Nikoleta Daskalova (research lead), Svetla Encheva, Rada Elenkova, Milena Kadieva, Pavel Antonov and Todor Yalamov. The cover illustration of this report was made by Betina Gankova.
This work forms part of the APC 'Feminist Internet Research Network' project, supported by the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors.
Project Team:
Dr Araba Sey (Project lead)
Dr Alison Gillwald
Mariama Deen-Swarray
Naila Govan-Vassen
Chenai Chair
Field Team:
Dr Josephine Mukabera
Dr Innocent Iyakaremye
This research is part of the Feminist Internet Research Network project led by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), with funding from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors.
Authors: Joana Varon, Paz Peña
This research is part of the Feminist Internet Research Network project led by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), with funding from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors.
Authors: Bruna Zanolli and Débora Prado
This work forms part of the APC 'Feminist Internet Research Network' project, supported by the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors.
Prepared by Horacio Sívori and Bruno Zilli
Research team
Social media: Tatiana Laai
Interviewer: Silvia Aguião
Digital methods: Fabio Gouveia
statistics: Eliane De Paula
This research is part of the Feminist Internet Research Network project led by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), with funding from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors.