gender

In this column, Nadika Nadja explores the world of gaming and how it opened up realms of experience for her. Second Life, an enormous immersive multiplayer game, and many other similar environments on the internet, have been revelatory and powerful spaces for people to discover aspects of themselves, particularly in terms of gender and sexuality. From shame and fear, to play and sex, and to…

The non-territorial, transborder Internet has added layers of complexity to the human rights debate. The idea of substantive equality – a compass for human rights and the key to gender justice – must be interpreted anew and afresh, as the force of digital technologies complicates the nature of social relations and institutions. The easy binary divisions of online and offline cease to make sense…

Global data volume has grown exponentially in recent years and experts expect this trend to continue. The wider trend towards the pervasive datafication of our lives is not one we can just sit out. Big data and the algorithmic decisions it feeds permeate citizenship, healthcare, welfare states, education, finance, law enforcement as well as the ways in which we shop, travel, and live our social…

It is a sacred act to tell and to listen to stories. Some of our stories are rooted so deep in our cells, psyches and hearts, that it takes an act of courage to find the words to tell them. We each contain a multitude of stories that shape and make us who we are. It can also be a political act to tell a story. We conceptualise digital story telling as a recording and documentation method which…

Games on mobile phones are often a disregarded area of study, because it is relatively cheap and less glamorous than video games. But global consumer spending on mobile gaming in 2015 was estimated to be worth 34.8 billion dollars, and there have been several reports talking about how India is on the ‘verge of a mobile gaming boom’. What the numbers often fail to mention is that a large chunk of…

There are a growing number of resources to prevent and respond to many kinds of online harassment faced by women and marginalised people working as activists, human rights defenders or journalists. But what happens 'the day after' an attack? What happens after the more urgent crisis phase(s) of a campaign of harassment passes?

The word Impostor keeps coming up every time a trans woman writes about herself. It is there, just below the surface, despite all the estrogen and progesterone, under all the skin-colour foundation and pink lipstick and shiny earrings. It is behind the pads on our breast, cushioning the tender nipples. The feeling, and the word - impostor. We are impostors when we try to be us, and when we try to…

Contemporary surveillance practices are to a large extent big data driven, underpinned by a collect-it-all logic, and ever expanding due to fear-mongering, yet pervasive national security discourse. Surveillance technologies and practices have not only multiplied in scale and quantity. Too often, feminist issues on the one hand, and discussions around privacy and surveillance on the other still…

In South Africa a video recently went viral in which a young woman is gang-raped. This video has re-ignited discussions around gender-based violence within the country, many of these discussions have taken place on social media platforms such as Twitter.

Since the 1995 conference in Beijing, the Global Media Monitoring Project has provided a snapshot of gender imbalances in the world's media, once every five years. This year, they expanded the coverage from the 'traditional' media to take a look at the internet. Unfortunately, their findings were not encouraging.