social media

This week’s blog looks at the impact of the Internet on politics.

Too much debate about the Information Society is binary. To advocates, anything digital looks good. Others are spooked by impacts that are uncontrolled and unbenign. If we’re serious, we need to be more nuanced. Some reflection on this where social media’s concerned this week; next week, the Internet’s impact on politics.

This research paper highlights the trends in religion-based hate speech in relation with the right to free speech in the online space in India.

In late May the Guardian released the Facebook Files, leaked internal documents revealing how the company moderates content. Although Facebook has made some improvements, these documents confirm that it's often one step forward, one step back, as the platform continues to censor women's agency, especially women of colour and especially in relation to activism, while letting harassment flou...

In this column I am going to explore how women in the global South are reclaiming social media to promote body-positivity. For the purpose of this discussion, I have chosen to focus on social media accounts that show positive, realistic images of varied black and brown women.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about politics and social media. Some have seen Facebook, Twitter and the like as champions of empowerment; others, more recently, as vehicles for hate. I’d suggest they’re both and more.

In May 2017, countless South African women took to Twitter and Facebook to share their 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.

When you receive calls at all hours from women desperate to get intimate photos shared without consent taken offline, it's a relief to hear about Facebook's latest move to address the distribution of non-consensual intimate images. Finally!