Since 2024, 10 partners of the Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN) have embarked on research projects to deepen the discursive framing of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) through feminist intersectional analysis. In examining the deeply intersecting gendered, sexualised and racialised experiences that are embedded in the never-ending and shape-shifting colonial and heteropatriarchal system, these researchers addressed violence and resilience in a way that is rooted in their (and their communities’) lived realities, in the absurdities they witness and in the paths of resistance they help to forge.
This cycle of FIRN is especially poignant because of the multiple genocides we are witnessing, with an acute recognition of how technology has played a critical role. Recently, Dallia Abdelmoniem, a Sudanese activist and advocate, observed that the world is experiencing war fatigue when she explained why Sudan is not getting as much publicity as it should. The work we do is situated right in this mix. And it is not just the work: we, the people doing it, are witnessing this from a distance or are at the centre of it, as we belong to these endangered communities. There is no way of compartmentalising these realities from our work. These realities are inseparable from our work and have fuelled and impacted us all in multiple ways.
Inevitably, the research journey reflected in a series of 10 groundbreaking research reports recently published by FIRN is impactful in the context of such a global political crisis moment. But research here is more than just a means of generating knowledge and crafting necessary narratives. It is also a point of connection, a space created to strengthen networks and movements. It is an act of bringing people together to reflect on the pressing issues of our time. The impact of our partners’ research goes far beyond the key findings summarised in these publications. Attentive to shifting regional politics, our partners carried out two years of research, characterised by a flexibility to “hold space” despite the rise of fascism that exposes the world order masked behind “post-colonial” “post-apartheid” and “post-everything” labels. These projects revealed that such pretentious engagements with the Global South can constitute a form of violent harm. The radical interventions of these community-led initiatives have helped us rearticulate TFGBV, making this a humbling experience.
This invites us to consider how to assess and communicate the impact of this FIRN cycle. Our partners have shown us how the ability to document, to write, to be seen and heard and to gather is already uneven and precarious. In this context, in order to meaningfully understand the impact of our work, especially in moments of ongoing injustices, violence, crises and wars, such work should begin by disrupting what impact looks like in conventional ways. Beyond the narrow framing of impact as outputs – i.e. reports published, policies influenced, outreach made – a feminist reflection compelled us to recognise that the very notion of impact is deeply political, shaped by various power dynamics and embedded with the many interconnected social and geopolitical issues that make the work we do urgent and necessary.
At the same time, centring feminist ethics of care within our network also means recognising the need to sit with the messiness and unevenness of how impact is articulated, felt and experienced. Impact unfolds through moments of unlearning and decolonising. At times, it took a form of disengagement and breaking away from complying with what was needed, while engaging in a way that truly made sense to the partner in the network. Such refusal is made possible through the foundational and slow process of building trust in the network and the strengthening of the movement through collaboration and solidarity. Impact does not emerge in a linear or neat way, nor can it ever be clearly attributed to a single intervention or project. Far from seeing the impact of feminist work as limited, this shift in perspective invites us to see our collective ability to create impact in a myriad of ways and in shapes and forms that are evolving and enduring beyond the immediate project timeframe.
Within the context of FIRN, we asked what power structure have we challenged through a feminist research methodology, whose voices have been amplified and reclaimed, how has knowledge been produced in ways that matter to those most affected and how have we cared for and remained accountable to our community. Our partners’ stories have shown that impact can be found in the process of producing knowledge, including documenting and writing despite fear of surveillance and violence, paying attention to the power dynamic within a research process, recognising the invisible labour of care in research, positioning the community as co-producer of knowledge, carving out space for sense-making and solidarity and refusing to be erased and forgotten.
What inspired the writing of this blog is the importance of sharing our learning through the reflections of all our partners in their technical reports and the way they approach answering questions about their project’s impact and taking part in the network at large. Reading these internal reports made us question the way we understood what impact is or should look like. Thus, by bringing their voices to the fore through the reflections they have written, we seek to share some of their own perspectives on the research process and what has been achieved. We hope to move away from a quantitative or utilitarian approach to outcomes and instead capture and share what they highlight as an important change in their own terms, what kind of hope is possible and what kind of resilience is needed.
Breaking with systems that kill
In the era of AI-automated annihilation, Ghiwa Sayegh, Sabiha Allouche and Kohl, the authors of the report We are the interruption: Technology, militancy and endless genocide, questioned what sabotaging the tools of colonial genocide and occupation and embracing limitations as anti-colonial praxis could look like. When asked which story of change they would share from their research processes from Lebanon, with a much-needed honesty, they said:
It’s hard to think of a positive story where genocide is concerned. […] We didn’t make the world a better place. But we sure helped understand why it’s endlessly murderous and why the colonial/capitalist expansion seems unstoppable. […] We also hope to have planted seeds as to how to organise, how to use technology to our advantage without reproducing the systems that are killing us and how to do research/write differently. The hive found that coming together, even if online, brought them some collective comfort amidst the atrocities.
The strength of listening
The research entitled Queer resistance: Online gender-based violence against LGBTQIA+ Ethiopians looked into how queer communities are impacted by online gender-based violence in Ethiopia and yet continue to exist and build community with creativity, resistance and strength. Martha Tadesse, S.A. explained:
One of the most significant changes we witnessed was the sense of validation participants expressed simply from being heard. For many, this was the first time someone had asked them to speak openly about online harassment, threats and erasure. And to treat those experiences as legitimate and worthy of documentation. […] Sharing these moments was more than data collection; it was an act of recognition. Participants described feeling less isolated, more aware that their experiences were part of broader patterns rather than personal failures.
For them, recording lived experiences as such is a form of power:
It asserts that these stories matter, that harm is real and that queer lives cannot simply be erased from digital history. When people see their experiences reflected in research and advocacy, they recognize that they are not alone, and that recognition is the first step toward change.
This is also proved to be the case in a research project carried out in a different context in India. “Participating in this study helped one trans woman articulate her experience of TFGBV, and in interacting with other queer-trans people with similar experiences, feel less alone,” said researchers Eesha Lavalekar, Sharin D’Souza and Joshua Mark George from Sangath. By adopting an intersectional, participatory approach, the TransNET project examined how transgender, non-binary and gender-diverse persons in India experience TFGBV, what strategies they employ to resist and safeguard themselves and what barriers exist in accessing support.
Black consciousness and resistance against isolation
In Carving out our spaces: Experiences of Black Brazilian women resisting technology-facilitated gender-based violence, Bárbara Paes and Ester Borges explored the impacts of TFGBV on the experiences of Black Brazilian women, as well as documenting how they have been resisting, creating connections with each other and finding joy in spite of the hostility. In Brazil, TFGBV is often under-theorized and under-discussed, with its expressions, impacts and repercussions absent from public conversations. As the researchers highlighted:
During interviews and collective gatherings for this project, several participants expressed how part of the negative impacts of TFGBV was precisely how isolating it can be to not have spaces to discuss this with others, and how there seems to be a lack of vocabulary to adequately address how it relates to Black Brazilian women.
They found that the collective conversations hosted with research participants provided a relevant space for those much-needed discussions among Black women, while hoping these conversations multiply. Quoting their community:
One of the participants said in an interview, “They want us not to talk about it [TFGBV and attacks] with each other, so we can’t understand what is happening and so that we are not strong together.”
A feminist helpline: Rekindling hope
Another study carried out in Brazil, albeit with a completely different focus, also highlighted the importance of coming together. Carl and Dany Araújo, authors of Feminist digital forensics: A study and a proposal for development, celebrated the event they held with other partner organisations to launch their research report.
The event served as a reunion:
In that space, a strong bond of collaboration and empathy was reinforced, extending not only among the organisations at the table but also to everyone following us, both in person and online. [They also] welcomed long-time collaborators, including former members of MariaLab, who now follow different paths but maintain enduring affection and support.
As a feminist hacker organisation, in its research MariaLab explored how digital forensics can be used to address TFGBV cases, with the aim of developing feminist helplines. For them, the gathering rekindled hope and reinforced the reasons why they continue to act together to build a feminist internet free from violence for all people:
When dealing with a topic as difficult as gender-based violence, spaces for dialogue like the one we created allow us to reflect on our work, recognise its importance and gather the strength to persevere despite countless challenges.
Learning from one another, changing ourselves
Reflecting on their foundational approach, the research team working on the South African project Black women and gender non-conforming persons and technology-facilitated gender-based violence: A decolonial feminist exploration emphasised:
Whenever we work with participants from a decolonial and feminist perspective, our aim is to orient our work toward serving those most oppressed and to do research that is active, engaged and participant-centred. Nonetheless, it might be inappropriate for us to articulate the story of this research for any specific participant. Instead, we can talk about our story of doing this work.
This project examined how people experience TFGBV differently due to historical and geopolitical factors and how TFGBV is used to silence bloggers and journalists doing feminist work. Based at the Hub for Decolonial Feminist Psychologies in Africa within the University of Cape Town, the team noted:
[Through an exploration of] how violence is normalised online, how this violence takes a specific racialising and dehumanising character when it is directed at black women and queer people and how the online space becomes a place of self-regulation but also of asserting agency and identity, we were able to build our capacity as teachers, knowledge producers, researchers and speakers on the issue of GBV to deliver nuanced, complex and important accounts of how online violence permeates everyday experiences. [They were also] able to illustrate that academic research teams can centre decolonial feminist principles of care, justice and community and that the often hostile and competitive ethos that characterises academic spaces can be countered.
From Egypt, Aya El-Husseini also shared her process of self-reflection during the course of the research project Propaganda, hostility and resistance: Realities of technology-facilitated violence in Egypt, which provides an intersectional examination of the complex array of political, economic and social structures that contribute to shaping the realities of TFGBV in that country:
Applying a feminist research methodology grounded in care and mutual learning was such a rich experience. We held regular debriefings throughout the process to collectively discuss participant conversations, reflect on dynamics, emergent tensions and ethical dilemmas and reassess our approach, which was essential for ensuring the credibility and trustworthiness of findings. These sessions fostered ongoing engagement and critical reflection on our positionality, privilege and geographical location, heightening our awareness of how they shaped interactions.
Researching with, rather than about, those impacted
Aretha Asakitikpi and Alex Asakitikpi investigated university students’ understanding and experiences regarding TFGBV on social media and online dating platforms in South Africa. For them, this was an opportunity to involve young people in the topic. Their project had a hands-on component – a training module – that served as a very strong platform to give the participants confidence to speak about TFGBV:
They answered questions intelligently from their peers, produced printed literature, which was distributed around their campus, and made intellectual presentations. If I were to conduct this research again, I would involve more youths at the initiation, planning and execution stages.
Set against Tajikistan’s political and social structure, the research “I am drowning under the weight of hatred”: The scope and nature of technology-facilitated gender-based violence in Tajikistan, by Gulbakhor Makhkamova, Ph.D. and Victoria Fletcher, made a deep dive into TFGBV as a continuum with offline violence, reinforcing patriarchal values and established gender norms that have power over women and are used to control them.
This is the first research of its kind and a feminist one at that. In many ways, this project used TFGBV as an entrance point to engage with their community and the wider community to talk about intersecting forms of GBV that women in Tajikistan experience. The Women’s Center “Gulrukhsor” plays a key role in the research and as a place where women take refuge to speak about their experience, with the research amplifying women’s voices.
Working within a highly censored and silenced context, the researchers had to navigate participants’ reluctance to share their experiences, including instances where participants initially agreed to be interviewed but later withdrew their consent and requested that their stories not be used. Yet, even with these barriers, as reflected by them in a GenderIT.org article, the interview process “provides an opportunity for someone to speak out, and some people want to share every violent and difficult moment of their life, even if it isn’t relevant to TFGBV.” In this sense, feminist research practices move beyond data collection to the creation of spaces where women are seen and heard, their experiences are acknowledged and validated and where they can reclaim, even temporarily, a sense of power and agency over their own narrative.
The research Digital rights of Uruguayan sex workers, led by sex workers in collaboration with feminist academics, identified the challenges and opportunities they face online, as well as the safety and self-care strategies they develop individually and collectively. This project set out to reclaim the voices and stories of sex workers, which have been narrated and told by academics and others who are not living that life. The sex workers’ collective sought to conduct this research on their own terms. They wanted to tell their own story, and the researchers and data collectors were sex workers. In their GenderIT.org article on research methodology, the authors Analía Lavin and Karina Núñez stated:
Being an object of study is not the same as being a subject who leads a process of knowledge production. If you are only being “studied”, you do not have the responsibility to maintain a counternarrative situated in other, non-academic bodies.
Working within the confines of a foreign language, alongside the logistical barriers of securing a visa and passport, these barriers experienced by sex workers surfaced the often under-examined form of marginalisation and in doing so, deepened feminist discourse by including more situated and nuanced perspectives.
FIRN is a collaborative and multidisciplinary research network led by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and APC. It focuses on the making of a feminist internet as critical to bring about transformation in gendered structures of power that exist online and onground. Find out more about FIRN: https://firn.genderit.org/