GenderIT.org
The EROTICS project looks at the impact of regulatory frameworks and control mechanisms on the actual lived practices, experiences and concerns of internet users in the exercise of their sexual rights. At its seminal stage, five case studies showed that while increasing online activity exposes users to certain risks and threats, individuals and collectives are successful in developing means of self-protection, regulation and empowerment. However, national governments, as well as business and ...
EROTICS is an exploration of the internet and its multi-layered relationship with sexuality, rights and sexual expression, and is a space/place of practices and a network of people which started in 2008. Its purpose was and is to look into the obscure, the unexpected and the obvious. The internet is a fast-paced world, known for accelerations but also broken links, unfinished architectures, truly a network of networks. Nine years could sound like a long-term research project, but actually it ...
The Association for Progressive Communications’ Women’s Rights Programme (APC WRP) has worked to render visible the impact of online gender-based violence (GBV) on women’s rights for more than a decade. We have worked with women's organisations and advocates to identify, monitor, analyse and combat uses of the internet and digital technologies that are harmful to women and marginalised co...
The articles in this bilingual edition point to how visibility, a complicated phenomenon in itself, is the starting point of a different way of being, and how the stories we tell – entangled in the fine wires of technology – are necessary and essential, and could be the foundations for the movement for change. The title of this edition – "We cannot be what we cannot see" is taken from Ker...
In late May the Guardian released the Facebook Files, leaked internal documents revealing how the company moderates content. Many of us have long called for more transparency around Facebook's content moderation so we can better understand gender-based violence that happens on the platform and provide feedback. Although Facebook has made some improvements1, these documents confirm that it's oft...
Connecting the next billion, is rightly so, an important issue in ensuring everyone has the choice to access the internet. Women, and in particular those with low levels of income and education, are more likely to be the unconnected. However, gaining access is one thing, but what are the challenges that limit men and women’s experience of the internet and present a barrier to access? In this ...
I remember flipping through magazines as a teenager and wondering why none of the girls looked like me. In the makeup and hair sections, none of the advice applied to me because I did not fit the categories of slender, fair, blonde, brunette, redhead etc. Instead, I had (and still have) black skin, a booty, and coarse, ethnic, African hair – not ideal for silky high ponies or chic messy buns....
Hundreds of activists, advocates, journalists, researchers, donors, and just about everyone else converged into the second-largest archipelago in the Baltic Sea – the city of Stockholm – to discuss power and access online. 10 p.m. sun aside, this year’s Stockholm Internet Forum (#SIF17 for easy tracking of the event on Twitter) was stronger than ever before and saw its participants and pa...
The African market is flooded with zero rating services such as Free Basics (Facebook’s zero rating scheme) and other subsidised data strategies. Do these schemes make internet more affordable and bring access to more people in Africa? The main plus for Free Basics has been that it provides free watered down internet access to those who don't usually have that kind of access, even to selected...
In May 2017, countless South African women took to Twitter and Facebook to share their harrowing experiences of abuse under the hashtag #MenAreTrash. The outpour of tweets and Facebook posts was sparked by the murder of Karabo Mokoena, a 22-year-old woman who was allegedly killed and burned by her boyfriend. Although the wording of #MenAreTrash has caused controversy, that will not be the focal...
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2019
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