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Roundtable on India’s Gig-work Economy
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/india-gig-work-economy-roundtable
<b>Working in the gig-economy has been associated with economic vulnerabilities. However, there are also moral and affective vulnerabilities as workers find their worth measured everyday by their performance of—and at—work and in every interaction and movement. This roundtable discussion marks the end of our series on 'India’s Gig-work Economy' published by the Platypus blog of the Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing (CASTAC). In this discussion, the researchers reflect on methods, challenges, inter-subjectivities and possible future directions for research on the topic. Listen to the audio track below or read the transcript for the full discussion.</b>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Originally published by the <a href="http://blog.castac.org/category/series/indias-gig-work-economy/" target="_blank">Platypus blog</a> of CASTAC on September 5, 2019.</em></p>
<h4>Full <a href="http://blog.castac.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/CASTAC-roundtable-transcript.docx" target="_blank">transcript</a> of the roundtable in English.</h4>
<hr />
<iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/q4G4v46ZlOU" frameborder="0" height="315" width="100%"></iframe>
<h3><strong>Excerpts from the roundtable</strong></h3>
<h4>Part 1: On continuities between traditional and newer forms of work in cab-driving</h4>
<p><strong>Anushree (researcher, taxi-driving in Mumbai):</strong> “Something that came out during field work was the flow of workers from traditional services to app-based services which kind of happened in phases and all these platforms have played a different function in the history of this. While the radio taxis were more important in teaching workers to become professionals in the service economy the new platforms have given them a larger customer base and hired access to audience.”</p>
<p><strong>Sarah (researcher, taxi-driving in Delhi):</strong> “Prior to Ola and Uber there were radio cabs, but they were not the same phenomenon obviously. They used to work in specific pockets better, such as the airport route.”</p>
<h4>Part 2: Regulation of platform companies and platform-work</h4>
<p>The State’s response to disruptive technologies in India has always accounted for worker groups as electoral constituents as well. This means that there are no neat divisions between older black and yellow cabs and the newer ride-hailing app-based cabs. To pacify the threatened black and yellow cab drivers, they were accorded a special category on hailing apps as well:</p>
<p><strong>Anushree:</strong> So there were a lot of issues around the emergence of the app-based platforms and services and how they were disrupting the existing arrangements so in a bid to pacify the yellow and black cab drivers who are already operating in the city, these platform companies decided to go ahead and provide access to traditional taxi services as well. But also the related development that happened there is at the Maharashtra state government also provided another app to the black and yellow Cab drivers and as far as I found out during my fieldwork there hasn’t been any resolution on that front and most black and yellow cab drivers also use the State government made app but they also log into apps and every time I tried to book a black and yellow cab using Ola and Uber I could not get one.</p>
<h4>Part 3: On motivations and perceptions of gig-work</h4>
<p><strong>Simiran (researcher, food-delivery work in Mumbai):</strong> “So, I felt that these non app-based workers had difficulty joining apps because they lack domicile proof to prove they live in the city. There is also a perception that one needs to be English speaking. I am not implying that app-based workers have no rural roots or are all English speaking or educated but this is the perception that was held by non-app workers that was interesting.”</p>
<p><strong>Rajendra (researcher, food-delivery work in Delhi):</strong> “In case of the food-delivery workers in Delhi, they push them to deliver orders on time. This pressure makes them violate traffic rules, they ride on pavements, they break traffic signals. This also disrupts the social understanding of how to move in the city.”</p>
<h4>Part 4: On studying the gig-economy in India: how did you recruit, why?</h4>
<p><strong>Noopur:</strong> Why not order and recruit because so many people seem to be taking this pathway to approach gig-economy workers?</p>
<p><strong>Simiran:</strong> “…One thing is that I have never ordered food online so I wanted to keep it a bit blind that way but also the other thing is that I did not want my first interaction with the worker to be as a consumer or in a consumer-provider relationship. So, I was searching on Youtube, looking for city names and looking for search terms such as strikes or protests. Looking for videos about these things and their views on the companies…This was very interesting because there were also people from non-metro cities, from small towns doing this work who were also very eager to speak to me. They were expressive already and wanting to speak…”</p>
<p><strong>Anushree:</strong> “Apart from them fleet owners and union members were very eager to talk to us. They saw the study as a way to put their voice out. I had to establish my identity as well as a researcher. I used Telegram and facebook groups extensively…I think I relied on Telegram the most. It was also surprising that such a diverse set of people were on that platform. I had never used Telegram before this project but the comfort levels of all the people using it was really surprising. Drivers in the union members group was sort of surprising to me, they were posting images from the road, they were posting audio notes, they were moderating conversations in the group. Telegram was my major source of responses and I also got to know what was happening on the ground.”</p>
<p><strong>Sarah:</strong> “So, when you identify as a researcher and ask them these questions there is a certain expectation of allyship. So, I started asking them what they think is a good customer. That was a good entry point to assuring them that I was on their side. Some of them were still very cautious. We were talking about things like drunk women and they would be quick to tell me that not all women are bad. Or not all customers are bad. But discussing customers and their behavior was generally a good way to connect with them…”</p>
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<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/india-gig-work-economy-roundtable'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/india-gig-work-economy-roundtable</a>
</p>
No publisherNoopur Raval, Anushree Gupta, Rajendra Jadhav, Sarah Zia, and Simiran LalvaniGenderDigital LabourResearchPlatform-WorkFuture of WorkNetwork EconomiesResearchers at WorkMapping Digital Labour in India2020-05-19T06:36:34ZBlog EntryCall for Researchers: Welfare, Gender, and Surveillance
http://editors.cis-india.org/jobs/researchers-welfare-gender-surveillance-call
<b>We are inviting applications for two researchers. Each researcher is expected to write a narrative essay that interrogates the modes of surveillance that people of LGBTHIAQ+ and gender non-conforming identities and sexual orientations are put under as they seek sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services in India. The researchers are expected to undertake field research in the location they are based in, and reflect on lived experiences gathered through field research as well as their own experiences of doing field research. Please read the sections below for more details about the work involved, the timeline for the same, and the application process for this call.</b>
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<h4>Call for Researchers: <a href="https://github.com/cis-india/website/raw/master/docs/CIS_Researchers_WelfareGenderSurveillance_Call_20200110.pdf" target="_blank">Download</a> (PDF)</h4>
<hr />
<h3><strong>Description of the Work</strong></h3>
<p>Each researcher is expected to author a narrative essay that presents and reflects on lived experiences of people of LGBTHIAQ+ and gender non-conforming identities and sexual orientations as they seek sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services in India. We expect the essay to contribute to a larger body of knowledge around the increasing focus on data-driven initiatives for public health provision in the country and elsewhere. Accordingly, the researcher may respond to any one or more than one of the following questions, within the context of the geographical focus as specified by the researcher:</p>
<ul>
<li>What are the modes of surveillance, especially in terms of generation and exploitation of digital data, experienced by people of marginalised gender identities and sexual orientations in India, as they avail of sexual and reproductive healthcare?</li>
<li>How are the lived experiences of underserved populations, such as people of marginalised gender identities and sexual orientations, shaped by gendered surveillance while accessing sexual and reproductive services?</li>
<li>What are the modes of governance and gender ideologies that have mediated the increasing datafication of such provision?</li></ul>
<p>We expect the researchers to draw on a) the Indian Supreme Court’s framing of privacy in India, as a fundamental right, and its implications; and b) apply and/or build on feminist conceptualisations of privacy. Further, we expect the researchers to respond to the uncertain landscape of legal rights accessible to people of LGBTHIAQ+ and gender non-conforming identities and sexual orientations, especially in the current context shaped by The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019.</p>
<p>The researchers will undertake field research in locations of their choice, conduct interviews and discussions with people of LGBTHIAQ+ and gender non-conforming identities and sexual orientations seeking such services, and conduct formal and informal interviews with officials and personnel associated with public and private sector agencies involved in the provision of SRH services.</p>
<h3><strong>Eligibility and Application Process</strong></h3>
<h4>We specifically encourage people of LGBTHIAQ+ and gender non-conforming identities and sexual orientations to submit their applications for this call for researchers.</h4>
<p>We are seeking applications from individuals who:</p>
<ul>
<li>Are based in the place where field study is to be undertaken, for the duration of the study;</li>
<li>Are fluent in the main regional language(s) spoken in the city where the study will be conducted, and in English (especially written);</li>
<li>Preferably have a postgraduate degree (current students should also apply) in social or technical sciences, journalism, or legal studies (undergraduate degree-holders with research or work experience should also apply); and</li>
<li>Have previous research and writing experiences on issues at the intersection of sexual and reproductive health, gender justice and women’s rights, and health informatics or digital public health.</li></ul>
<p>Please send the following documents (in text or PDF formats) to <strong>raw@cis-india.org by Friday, January 24</strong> to apply for the researcher positions:</p>
<ul>
<li>Brief CV with relevant academic and professional information;</li>
<li>Two samples of academic/professional (published/unpublished) writing by the applicant; and</li>
<li>A brief research proposal (around 500 words) that should specify the scope (geographical and conceptual), research questions, and motivation of the essay to be authored by the applicant.</li></ul>
<p>All applicants will be informed of the selection decisions by Friday, January 31.</p>
<h3><strong>Timeline of the Work</strong></h3>
<p><strong>February 3-7</strong> CIS research team will have a call with each researcher to plan out the work to be undertaken by them</p>
<p><strong>February - March</strong> Researchers are to undertake field research, as proposed by the researchers and discussed with the CIS research team</p>
<p><strong>March 27</strong> Researchers are to submit a full draft essay (around 3,000 words)</p>
<p><strong>March 30 - April 3</strong> CIS research team will have call with each researcher to discuss the shared draft essays and make plans towards their finalisation</p>
<p><strong>May 15</strong> Researchers are to submit the final essay (around 5,000 words, without footnotes and references)</p>
<p>As part of this project, CIS will organise two discussion events in Bengaluru and New Delhi during April-June (tentatively). Event dates are to be decided in conversation with the researchers, and they will be invited to present their works in the same.</p>
<h3><strong>Remuneration</strong></h3>
<p>Each researcher will be paid a remuneration of Rs. 1,00,000 (inclusive of taxes) over two equal installments: first on signing of the agreement in February 2020, and second on submission of the final essay in May 2020.</p>
<p>We will also reimburse local travel expenses of each researcher upto Rs. 10,000, and translations and transcriptions expense (if any) incurred by each researcher upto Rs. 10,000. These reimbursements will be made on the basis of expense invoices shared by the researcher.</p>
<h3><strong>Description of the Project</strong></h3>
<p>Previous research conducted by CIS on the subject of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services in India observes that there is a complex web of surveillance, or ‘dataveillance’, around each patient as they avail of SRH services from the state. In this current project, we are aiming to map the ecosystem of surveillance around SRH services as their provision becomes increasingly ‘data-driven’, and explore its implications for patients and beneficiaries.</p>
<p>Through this project, we are interested in documenting the roles played by both the public and the private sector actors in this ecosystem of health surveillance. We understand the role of private sector actors as central to state provision of sexual and reproductive health services, especially through the institutionalisation of data-driven health insurance models, as well as through extensive privatisation of public health services. By studying semi-private, private, and public medical establishments including hospitals, primary/community health centres and clinics, we aim to develop a comparative analysis of surveillance ecosystems across the three establishment types.</p>
<p>This project is led by Ambika Tandon, Aayush Rathi, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay at the Centre for Internet and Society, and is supported by a grant from Privacy International.</p>
<h3><strong>Indicative Reading List</strong></h3>
<p><em>We are sharing below a short and indicative list of readings that may be useful for potential applicants</em>.</p>
<p>Aayush Rathi, <a href="https://www.epw.in/engage/article/indias-digital-health-paradigm-foolproof" target="_blank">Is India's Digital Health System Foolproof?</a> (2019)</p>
<p>Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon, <a href="https://www.epw.in/engage/article/data-infrastructures-inequities-why-does-reproductive-health-surveillance-india-need-urgent-attention" target="_blank">Data Infrastructures and Inequities: Why Does Reproductive Health Surveillance in India Need Our Urgent Attention?</a> (2019)</p>
<p>Ambika Tandon, <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ambika-tandon-december-23-2018-feminist-methodology-in-technology-research" target="_blank">Feminist Methodology in Technology Research: A Literature Review</a> (2018)</p>
<p>Ambika Tandon, <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/big-data-reproductive-health-india-mcts" target="_blank">Big Data and Reproductive Health in India: A Case Study of the Mother and Child Tracking System</a> (2019)</p>
<p>Anja Kovacs, <a href="https://genderingsurveillance.internetdemocracy.in/theory/" target="_blank">Reading Surveillance through a Gendered Lens: Some Theory</a> (2017)</p>
<p>Lindsay Weinberg, <a href="https://www.westminsterpapers.org/articles/10.16997/wpcc.258/" target="_blank">Rethinking Privacy: A Feminist Approach to Privacy Rights after Snowden</a> (2017)</p>
<p>Nicole Shephard, <a href="https://www.apc.org/en/pubs/big-data-and-sexual-surveillance" target="_blank">Big Data and Sexual Surveillance</a> (2016)</p>
<p>Sadaf Khan, <a href="https://deepdives.in/data-bleeding-everywhere-a-story-of-period-trackers-8766dc6a1e00" target="_blank">Data Bleeding Everywhere: A Story of Period Trackers</a> (2019)</p>
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<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/jobs/researchers-welfare-gender-surveillance-call'>http://editors.cis-india.org/jobs/researchers-welfare-gender-surveillance-call</a>
</p>
No publisherambikaWelfare GovernancePrivacyGenderGender, Welfare, and PrivacyResearchers at Work2020-02-13T15:05:37ZBlog EntryStakeholder Consultation on Digital Assets for Women’s Economic Empowerment | UN Women + SEWA
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/stakeholder-consultation-on-digital-assets-for-women2019s-economic-empowerment-un-women-sewa
<b>On December 06, 2019, Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi participated in a "Stakeholder Consultation on Digital Assets for Women’s Economic Empowerment: Addressing Barriers and Enhancing Opportunities for Women in Informal Economy and in Agriculture".</b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Aayush and Ambika participated upon the invite of UN Women and Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA), who were the organisers of the consultation. The consultation was from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm on 6th December, 2019 at the Claridges Hotel, New Delhi.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Former UN Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki Moon established the UN High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment (UNHLP-WEE) to make action oriented recommendations on how to improve economic outcomes for women in the context of the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030.The panel submitted its final report to the UN Secretary General in 2017, identifying seven drivers for women’s economic empowerment and laying out concrete actions for accelerating progress towards women’s full and equal economic participation. <br /> <br />In February 2019, SEWA Bharat and UN Women had organized a National consultation on “Taking Action Towards Transformative Change for Women in the Informal Sector in India” in India with civil society organizations, researchers, philanthropists and international organizations to prioritize action on the drivers for women’s economic empowerment in the context of India. Four drivers, amongst seven, were prioritized through the consultative process. Driver 4 on Building Assets – Digital, Financial and Property is one of the critical drivers for Women’s Economic Empowerment in India and has been prioritized for the first stakeholder consultation in the roadmap development process to contextualize the recommendation of HLP in the Indian context. <br /> <br />The primary objectives, then, of this consultation were as follows:</p>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;">To provide a platform for sharing of experiences in research, programming and policy to ensure digital assets for women in the informal economy and in agriculture;</li>
<li>To identify proven and promising practices in this regard; </li>
<li>To develop an action agenda including identification of areas for research, programming and policy to reduce the gender digital divide. </li></ol>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><br /><strong class="moz-txt-star">*Detailed agenda*</strong></p>
<div style="text-align: left;">Download the detailed agenda <a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/concept-note-and-agenda-for-stakeholder-consultation/">here</a>. </div>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> <br /><strong class="moz-txt-star">*Participation*</strong> <br /> <br />At the consultation, Aayush contributed to the breakout group on DBT while Ambika contributed to the one on employment. The consultation led to rich discussions as on-ground experiences and learning from implementation programs were shared widely to devise a roadmap and policy recommendations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/stakeholder-consultation-on-digital-assets-for-women2019s-economic-empowerment-un-women-sewa'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/stakeholder-consultation-on-digital-assets-for-women2019s-economic-empowerment-un-women-sewa</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminGenderInternet Governance2020-04-07T13:14:40ZNews ItemProject on Gender, Health Communications and Online Activism with City University
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/project-on-gender-health-communications-and-online-activism-with-city-university
<b>CIS is a partner on the project 'Gender, Health Communications and Online Activism in the Digital Age'. The project is lead by Dr. Carolina Matos, Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Media in the Department of Sociology at City University.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="moz-quote-pre">It is funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund. Ambika Tandon, Policy Officer at CIS, conducted fieldwork for the project in May and June 2019 as a research assistant.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="moz-quote-pre">The goal of the project is to advance research on how new communication technologies (ICTs) can be used to create awareness of gender equality and sexual and reproductive rights. It aims to assess how the use of technologies, by women's groups and feminist NGOs can empower women in developing countries to advance citizen and human rights with the intent to influence policy at the global and local level. More information on the preliminary findings of the project can be found in the downloadable presentation."</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="moz-quote-pre">You may find Dr. Carolina Matos's presentation <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/presentation-gender-health-communications-and-online-activism-in-the-digital-age-pdf" class="internal-link" title="Presentation: Gender, Health Communications, and Online Activism in the Digital Age (PDF)">here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/project-on-gender-health-communications-and-online-activism-with-city-university'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/project-on-gender-health-communications-and-online-activism-with-city-university</a>
</p>
No publisherambikaGenderInternet Governance2019-12-02T09:38:21ZBlog EntryComments to the United Nations Human Rights Commission Report on Gender and Privacy
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-to-the-unhrc-report-on-gender-and-privacy
<b>This submission to UNHRC presents a response by researchers at the CIS to ‘gender issues arising in the digital era and their impacts on women, men and individuals of diverse sexual orientations gender identities, gender expressions and sex characteristics’. It was prepared by Aayush Rathi, Ambika Tandon, and Pallavi Bedi in response to a report of consultation by a thematic taskforce established by the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy on ‘Privacy and Personality’ (hereafter, HRC Gender Report).</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>HRC Gender Report - Consultation version: <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Privacy/SR_Privacy/2019_HRC_Annex2_GenderReport.pdf" target="_blank">Read</a> (PDF)</h4>
<h4>Submitted comments: <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/comments-to-the-united-nations-human-rights-commission-report-on-gender-and-privacy" target="_blank">Read</a> (PDF)</h4>
<hr />
<p>The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), India, is an 11-year old non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. Through its diverse initiatives, CIS explores, intervenes in, and advances contemporary discourse and regulatory practices around internet, technology, and society in India,and elsewhere. Current focus areas include cybersecurity, privacy, freedom of speech, labour and artificial intelligence. CIS has been taking efforts to mainstream gender across its programmes, as well as develop specifically gender-focused research using a feminist approach.</p>
<p>CIS appreciates the efforts of Dr. Elizabeth Coombs, Chair, Thematic Action Stream Taskforce on “A better understanding of privacy”, and those of Professor Joseph Cannataci, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy. We are also grateful for the opportunity to put forth our views and comment on the HRC Gender Report.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-to-the-unhrc-report-on-gender-and-privacy'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-to-the-unhrc-report-on-gender-and-privacy</a>
</p>
No publisherAayush Rathi, Ambika Tandon and Pallavi BediPrivacyGenderInternet GovernanceResearchGender, Welfare, and PrivacyResearchers at Work2019-12-30T17:40:20ZBlog EntryDoing Standpoint Theory
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/doing-standpoint-theory
<b>Feminist research methodology has evolved from different epistemologies, with several different schools of thought. Some of the more popular ones are feminist standpoint theory, feminist empiricism, and feminist relativism. Standpoint theory holds the experiences of the marginalised as the source of ‘truth’ about structures of oppression, which is silenced by traditional objectivist research methods as they produce knowledge from the standpoint of voices in positions of power. In this essay published on the GenderIT website, Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi [1] discuss the practical applicability of these epistemologies to research practices in the field of technology and gender.</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>Cross-posted from <a href="https://www.genderit.org/articles/doing-standpoint-theory" target="_blank">GenderIT</a>, September 1, 2019</h4>
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<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/CatalinaAlzate.jpg/image" alt="Catalina Alzate - Speech Bubbles" class="image-left image-inline" title="Catalina Alzate - Speech Bubbles" /></p>
<h6>Image description: Three speech bubbles on different textures. Artist: <a href="https://www.genderit.org/users/catalina-alzate" target="_blank">Catalina Alzate</a><br /></h6>
<p>Feminist research methodology has evolved from different epistemologies, with several different schools of thought. Some of the more popular ones are feminist standpoint theory, feminist empiricism, and feminist relativism. Standpoint theory holds the experiences of the marginalised as the source of ‘truth’ about structures of oppression, which is silenced by traditional objectivist research methods as they produce knowledge from the standpoint of voices in positions of power [2]. Feminist empiricism does not eschew traditional modes of knowledge production, but emphasises diversity of research participants for feminist (and therefore also rigorous) knowledge production [3]. Relativists have critiqued standpoint theory for its tendency to essentialise the experience of marginalised groups, and subsume them into one homogenous voice to achieve the goal of ‘emancipatory’ research [4]. Relativists instead focus on multiple standpoints, which could be Dalit women, lesbian women, or women with disabilities [5]. We will be discussing the practical applicability of these epistemologies to research practices in the field of technology and gender.</p>
<h4>Standpoint theory holds the experiences of the marginalised as the source of ‘truth’ about structures of oppression, which is silenced by traditional objectivist research methods as they produce knowledge from the standpoint of voices in positions of power.</h4>
<p>As part of the Feminist Internet Research Network, the Centre for Internet and Society is undertaking research on the <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-domestic-work-india-announcement" target="_blank">digital mediation of domestic and care work in India</a>. The project aims to assess shifts in the sector, including conditions of work, brought on by the entry of digital platforms. Our starting point for designing a methodology for the research was standpoint theory, which we thought to be the best fit as the goal of the project was to disrupt dominant narratives of women’s labour in relation to platformisation. In the context of dalit feminis, Rege warns that standpoint research risks producing a narrow frame of identity politics, although it is critical to pay attention to lived experience and the “naming of difference” between dalit women and savarna women [6]. She asserts that neither ‘women’ nor ‘dalit women’ is a homogenous category. While feminist researchers from outside these categories cannot claim to “speak for” those within, they can “reinvent” themselves as dalit feminists and ally themselves with their politics.</p>
<p>In order to address this risk of appropriating the voices of domestic workers (“speaking for”), we chose to directly work with a domestic workers’ union in Bengaluru called Stree Jagruti Smiti. Bengaluru is one of the two cities we are conducting research in (the other being Delhi, with very few registered unions). This is meant to radically destabilise power hierarchies and material relations within the research process, as benefits of participatory research tend to accumulate with the researchers rather than participants [7].</p>
<p>Along with amplifying the voices of workers, a central objective of our project is to question the techno-solutionism that has accompanied the entry of digital platforms into the domestic work sector, which is unorganised and unregulated. To do so, we included companies and state labour departments as participants whose standpoint is to be interrogated. By juxtaposing the standpoints of stakeholders that have differential access to power and resources, the researcher is able to surface various conflicts and intersections in dominant and alternative narratives. This form of research also brings with it unique challenges, as researchers could find themselves mediating between the different stakeholders, while constantly choosing to privilege the standpoint of the least powerful - in this case the workers. Self-reflexivity then becomes necessary to ensure that the project does not slip into an absolutely relativist position, rather using the narratives of workers to challenge those of governments and private actors. This can also be done by ensuring that workers have agency to shape the agenda of researchers, thereby producing research which is instrumental in supporting grassroots campaigns and movements.</p>
<h4>Self-reflexivity then becomes necessary to ensure that the project does not slip into an absolutely relativist position, rather using the narratives of workers to challenge those of governments and private actors.</h4>
<p>Feminist participatory research itself, despite its many promises, is not a linear pathway to empowerment for participants [8]. At the very outset of the project, we were constantly asked the question by domestic workers and unions – why should we participate in this project? Researchers, in their experience, acquire information from the community throughout the process of data collection by positioning themselves as allies. However, as all such engagements are bound to limited timelines and budgets, researchers are then often absent at critical junctures where the community may need external support. We were also told that all too often, the output of the research itself does not make its way back to the participants, making it a one-way process of knowledge extraction. Being mindful of these experiences, we have integrated a feedback loop into our research design, which will allow us to design outputs that are accessible and useful to collectives of domestic workers.</p>
<p>Not only domestic workers and their organisations, many corporations operating these online portals and platforms often questioned the benefits of participating in the project. However, the manner of articulation differed. While attempting to reject the hierarchical nature of the researcher/participant relationship, we increasingly became aware that the underlying power equation was not a monolith. Rather, it varied across stakeholder groups and was explicitly contingent on the socially constructed positionalities already existing outside of the space of the interview. Companies, governments and workers all exemplified varying degrees of engagement with, knowledge of, and contributions to research. Interviews with workers and unions, and even some bootstrapped (i.e. without much external funding) , socially-minded companies, were often cathartic with an expectation of some benefits in return for opening themselves up to researchers. This was quite different for governments and larger companies, as conversations typically adhered to the patriarchal and classed notions of professionalism in sanitised, formal spaces [9] and the strict dichotomy between public and personal spaces. Their contribution seemingly required lesser affective engagement from the interviewee, thereby resulting in lesser investment in the outcome of the research itself.</p>
<p>The cathartic nature of interviews also speak to the impossibility of the distanced, Platonic, school of research. We were often asked politically charged questions, our advice solicited and information sought. Workers and representatives from platform companies alike would question our motivations with the research and challenge us by inquiring about the benefits accruing to us. Again, both set of stakeholders would often ask differently about how other platforms were; workers already registered on a platform would wonder if another platform would be ‘better’ and representatives of platform companies would be curious about competition. This is perhaps a consequence of attempting to design a study that is of use and of interest to the workers we have been reaching out to [10]. At times, we found ourselves at a place in the conversation where we were compelled to respond to political positions for the conversation to continue. There were interviews where notions of caste hierarchies (within oppressed classes) as a justification/complaint for engaging/having to engage in certain tasks would surface. Despite being beholden to a feminist consciousness that disregards the idea of the interviewer as neutral, we often found ourselves only hesitantly forthcoming. At times, it was to keep the interview broadly focused around the research subject, at others it was due to our own ignorance about the research artefact (in this instance, platforms mediating domestic work services). This underscores the challenges of seeing the interview as a value ridden space, where the contradictions between the interview as a data collection method and as a consciousness raising emerged - how could we share information about the artefact we were in the process of collecting data about?</p>
<h4>We were often asked politically charged questions, our advice solicited and information sought.</h4>
<p>The fostering of ‘rapport’ [11] has made its may into method, almost unknowingly. Often, respondents across stakeholder groups started from an initial place of hesitation, sometimes even suspicion. Several structural issues could be at work here - our inability in being able to accurately describe research itself, the class differences and at times, ideological ones as well. While with most participants, rapport was eventually established, its establishment was a laboured process. Especially given that we were using one-off, in-depth interviews as our method, securing an interview was contingent on the establishment of rapport. This isn’t to suggest that feminist research mandatorily requires the ‘doing of rapport’ [12], but that when it does, it’s a fortunate outcome and that feminist researchers engage with it more critically.</p>
<p>Building rapport creates an impression of having minimised the exploitation of the participant, however the underlying politics and pressures of building rapport need to be interrogated. Rapport, like research itself, is at times a performance; rapport is often not naturally occuring. Rather, rapport may also be built to conceal the very structural factors preventing it. For instance, during instances of ideological differences during the interview, we were at times complicit through our silence. This may have been to further a certain notion of ‘objectivity’ itself whereby the building and maintenance of rapport is essential to surfacing a participant’s real views. This then raises the questions: What are the ethical questions that the suppression of certain viewpoints and reactions pose? How does the building, maintenance and continuance of rapport inform the research findings? Rapport, then, comes in all shapes and sizes and its manifold forms implicate the research process differently. Another critical question to be addressed is - why does some rapport take less work than others? With platform companies, building rapport came by easier than it did with workers both on and off platforms. If understood as removing degrees of distance between the researcher and participants, several factors could play into the effort required to build rapport. For instance, language was a critical determinant of the ease of relationship-building. Being more fluent in English than in colloquial Hindi enabled clearer articulation of the research. Further, familiarity with the research process was, as expected, mediated along class lines. This influenced the manner in which we articulated research outcomes and objectives to workers with complete unfamiliarity with the meaning of research. Among workers, this unfamiliarity often resulted in distrust, which required the underlying politics of the research to be more critically articulated.</p>
<p>By and large, the feminist engagement with research methods has been quite successful in its resistance and transformation of traditional forms. Since Oakley’s conception of the interview as a deeply subjective space [13] and Harding’s dialectical conception of masculinist science through its history [14], the application of feminist critical theory has increasingly subverted assumptions around the averseness of research to political motivations. At the same time, it has made knowledge-production occur in a more equitable space. It is in this context that standpoint theory has had wide purchase, but challenges persist in its application. As the foregoing discussion outlines, we have been able to achieve some of the goals of feminist standpoint research while missing out on others. We also found the ‘multiple standpoints’ approach of relativists to be useful in a project involving multiple stakeholders - thereby also avoiding the risk of essentialisation of the identities of domestic workers. However, unlike the tendency of relativists to focus on each perspective as ‘equally valid truth’, we are choosing to focus on the conflicts and intersections between emerging discourses. Through this hybrid theoretical framework, we are seeking to make knowledge production more equitable. At the same time, the discussion around rapport shows that this may nevertheless happen in a limited fashion. Feminist research may never be fully non-extractive. The reflexivity exercised and choices made during the course of the research are key.</p>
<h4>Unlike the tendency of relativists to focus on each perspective as ‘equally valid truth’, we are choosing to focus on the conflicts and intersections between emerging discourses.</h4>
<p> </p>
<h3><strong>Endnotes</strong></h3>
<p>[1] The names of the authors are in alphabetical order.</p>
<p>[2] Harding, S. (2003) The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies, Routledge.</p>
<p>[3] M. Wickramasinghe, Feminist Research Methodology: Making meaning out of meaning-making, Zubaan, 2014</p>
<p>[4] Pease, D. (2000) Researching profeminist men's narratives: participatory methodologies in a postmodern frame. In B. Fawcett, D. Featherstone, J. Fook ll)'ld A. Rossiter (eds) Restarching and Practising in Social Work: Postmodern Feminist Perspectives (London: Routledge).</p>
<p>[5] Stanley, L. and Wise, S. (1983) Breaking Out: Feminist Consciousness and Feminist Research (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul).</p>
<p>[6] Rege, S. 1998. ” Dalit Women Talk Differently: A critique of ‘Difference’ and Towards a Dalit Feminist Standpoint.” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 33, No.44, pp 39-48.</p>
<p>[7] Heeks, R. and Shekhar, S. (2018) An Applied Data Justice Framework: Analysing Datafication and Marginalised Communities in Cities of the Global South. Working Paper Series, Centre for Development Informatics, University of Manchester.</p>
<p>[8] Stone, E. and Priestley, M. (1996) Parasites, pawn and partners: disability research and the role of nondisabled researchers. British Journal of Sociology, 47(4), 699-716.</p>
<p>[9] Evans, L. (2010). Professionalism, professionality and the development of education professionals. Br. J. Educ. Stud. 56, 20–38. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8527.2007.00392.x</p>
<p>[10] Webb C. Feminist methodology in nursing research. J Adv Nurs. 1984 May;9(3):249-56.</p>
<p>[11] Berger, R. (2015). Now I see it, now I don’t: researcher’s position and reflexivity in qualitative research. Qual. Res. 15, 219–234. doi:10.1177/1468794112468475; Pitts, M. J., and Miller-Day, M. (2007). Upward turning points and positive rapport development across time in researcher-participant relationships. Qual. Res. 7, 177–201. doi:10.1177/1468794107071409</p>
<p>[12] Dunscombe, J., and Jessop, J. (2002). “Doing rapport, and the ethics of ’faking friendship’,” in Ethics in Qualitative Research, eds T. Miller, M. Birch, M. Mauthner, and J. Jessop (London: SAGE), 108–121.</p>
<p>[13] Oakley, A. (1981). “Interviewing women: a contradiction in terms?” in Doing Feminist Research, ed. H. Roberts (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), 30–61.</p>
<p>[14] Harding, S. (1986). The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/doing-standpoint-theory'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/doing-standpoint-theory</a>
</p>
No publisherAmbika Tandon and Aayush RathiDigital EconomyGenderDigital LabourResearchPublicationsResearchers at WorkDigital Domestic Work2019-12-06T04:59:35ZBlog EntryDoing Standpoint Theory
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ambika-tandon-and-aayush-rathi-gender-it-september-1-2019-doing-standpoint-theory
<b>Feminist research methodology has evolved from different epistemologies, with several different schools of thought. Some of the more popular ones are feminist standpoint theory, feminist empiricism, and feminist relativism.</b>
<p>The article by Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi was published by <a class="external-link" href="https://www.genderit.org/articles/doing-standpoint-theory">GenderIT.org</a> on September 1, 2019.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Standpoint theory holds the experiences of the marginalised as the source of ‘truth’ about structures of oppression, which is silenced by traditional objectivist research methods as they produce knowledge from the standpoint of voices in positions of power<a href="https://www.genderit.org/articles/doing-standpoint-theory#sdfootnote2sym">2</a>. Feminist empiricism does not eschew traditional modes of knowledge production, but emphasises diversity of research participants for feminist (and therefore also rigorous) knowledge production<a href="https://www.genderit.org/articles/doing-standpoint-theory#sdfootnote3sym">3</a>. Relativists have critiqued standpoint theory for its tendency to essentialise the experience of marginalised groups, and subsume them into one homogenous voice to achieve the goal of ‘emancipatory’ research<a href="https://www.genderit.org/articles/doing-standpoint-theory#sdfootnote4sym">4</a>. Relativists instead focus on multiple standpoints, which could be Dalit women, lesbian women, or women with disabilities<a href="https://www.genderit.org/articles/doing-standpoint-theory#sdfootnote5sym">5</a>. We will be discussing the practical applicability of these epistemologies to research practices in the field of technology and gender.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; ">Standpoint theory holds the experiences of the marginalised as the source of ‘truth’ about structures of oppression, which is silenced by traditional objectivist research methods as they produce knowledge from the standpoint of voices in positions of power.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As part of the Feminist Internet Research Network, the Centre for Internet and Society is undertaking research on the digital mediation of domestic and care work in India. The project aims to assess shifts in the sector, including conditions of work, brought on by the entry of digital platforms. Our starting point for designing a methodology for the research was standpoint theory, which we thought to be the best fit as the goal of the project was to disrupt dominant narratives of women’s labour in relation to platformisation. In the context of dalit feminis, Rege warns that standpoint research risks producing a narrow frame of identity politics, although it is critical to pay attention to lived experience and the “naming of difference” between dalit women and savarna women<a href="https://www.genderit.org/articles/doing-standpoint-theory#sdfootnote6sym">6</a>. She asserts that neither ‘women’ nor ‘dalit women’ is a homogenous category. While feminist researchers from outside these categories cannot claim to “speak for” those within, they can “reinvent” themselves as dalit feminists and ally themselves with their politics.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In order to address this risk of appropriating the voices of domestic workers (“speaking for”), we chose to directly work with a domestic workers’ union in Bengaluru called Stree Jagruti Smiti. Bengaluru is one of the two cities we are conducting research in (the other being Delhi, with very few registered unions). This is meant to radically destabilise power hierarchies and material relations within the research process, as benefits of participatory research tend to accumulate with the researchers rather than participants<a href="https://www.genderit.org/articles/doing-standpoint-theory#sdfootnote7sym">7</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Along with amplifying the voices of workers, a central objective of our project is to question the techno-solutionism that has accompanied the entry of digital platforms into the domestic work sector, which is unorganised and unregulated. To do so, we included companies and state labour departments as participants whose standpoint is to be interrogated. By juxtaposing the standpoints of stakeholders that have differential access to power and resources, the researcher is able to surface various conflicts and intersections in dominant and alternative narratives. This form of research also brings with it unique challenges, as researchers could find themselves mediating between the different stakeholders, while constantly choosing to privilege the standpoint of the least powerful - in this case the workers. Self-reflexivity then becomes necessary to ensure that the project does not slip into an absolutely relativist position, rather using the narratives of workers to challenge those of governments and private actors. This can also be done by ensuring that workers have agency to shape the agenda of researchers, thereby producing research which is instrumental in supporting grassroots campaigns and movements.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; ">Self-reflexivity then becomes necessary to ensure that the project does not slip into an absolutely relativist position, rather using the narratives of workers to challenge those of governments and private actors.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Feminist participatory research itself, despite its many promises, is not a linear pathway to empowerment for participants<a href="https://www.genderit.org/articles/doing-standpoint-theory#sdfootnote8sym">8</a>. At the very outset of the project, we were constantly asked the question by domestic workers and unions – why should we participate in this project? Researchers, in their experience, acquire information from the community throughout the process of data collection by positioning themselves as allies. However, as all such engagements are bound to limited timelines and budgets, researchers are then often absent at critical junctures where the community may need external support. We were also told that all too often, the output of the research itself does not make its way back to the participants, making it a one-way process of knowledge extraction. Being mindful of these experiences, we have integrated a feedback loop into our research design, which will allow us to design outputs that are accessible and useful to collectives of domestic workers.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Not only domestic workers and their organisations, many corporations operating these online portals and platforms often questioned the benefits of participating in the project. However, the manner of articulation differed. While attempting to reject the hierarchical nature of the researcher/participant relationship, we increasingly became aware that the underlying power equation was not a monolith. Rather, it varied across stakeholder groups and was explicitly contingent on the socially constructed positionalities already existing outside of the space of the interview. Companies, governments and workers all exemplified varying degrees of engagement with, knowledge of, and contributions to research. Interviews with workers and unions, and even some bootstrapped (i.e. without much external funding) , socially-minded companies, were often cathartic with an expectation of some benefits in return for opening themselves up to researchers. This was quite different for governments and larger companies, as conversations typically adhered to the patriarchal and classed notions of professionalism in sanitised, formal spaces<a href="https://www.genderit.org/articles/doing-standpoint-theory#sdfootnote9sym">9</a> and the strict dichotomy between public and personal spaces. Their contribution seemingly required lesser affective engagement from the interviewee, thereby resulting in lesser investment in the outcome of the research itself.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The cathartic nature of interviews also speak to the impossibility of the distanced, Platonic, school of research. We were often asked politically charged questions, our advice solicited and information sought. Workers and representatives from platform companies alike would question our motivations with the research and challenge us by inquiring about the benefits accruing to us. Again, both set of stakeholders would often ask differently about how other platforms were; workers already registered on a platform would wonder if another platform would be ‘better’ and representatives of platform companies would be curious about competition. This is perhaps a consequence of attempting to design a study that is of use and of interest to the workers we have been reaching out to.<a href="https://www.genderit.org/articles/doing-standpoint-theory#sdfootnote10sym">10</a> At times, we found ourselves at a place in the conversation where we were compelled to respond to political positions for the conversation to continue. There were interviews where notions of caste hierarchies (within oppressed classes) as a justification/complaint for engaging/having to engage in certain tasks would surface. Despite being beholden to a feminist consciousness that disregards the idea of the interviewer as neutral, we often found ourselves only hesitantly forthcoming. At times, it was to keep the interview broadly focused around the research subject, at others it was due to our own ignorance about the research artefact (in this instance, platforms mediating domestic work services). This underscores the challenges of seeing the interview as a value ridden space, where the contradictions between the interview as a data collection method and as a consciousness raising emerged - how could we share information about the artefact we were in the process of collecting data about?</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; ">We were often asked politically charged questions, our advice solicited and information sought.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The fostering of ‘rapport’<a href="https://www.genderit.org/articles/doing-standpoint-theory#sdfootnote11sym">11</a> has made its may into method, almost unknowingly. Often, respondents across stakeholder groups started from an initial place of hesitation, sometimes even suspicion. Several structural issues could be at work here - our inability in being able to accurately describe research itself, the class differences and at times, ideological ones as well. While with most participants, rapport was eventually established, its establishment was a laboured process. Especially given that we were using one-off, in-depth interviews as our method, securing an interview was contingent on the establishment of rapport. This isn’t to suggest that feminist research mandatorily requires the ‘doing of rapport’<a href="https://www.genderit.org/articles/doing-standpoint-theory#sdfootnote12sym">12</a>, but that when it does, it’s a fortunate outcome and that feminist researchers engage with it more critically.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Building rapport creates an impression of having minimised the exploitation of the participant, however the underlying politics and pressures of building rapport need to be interrogated. Rapport, like research itself, is at times a performance; rapport is often not naturally occuring. Rather, rapport may also be built to conceal the very structural factors preventing it. For instance, during instances of ideological differences during the interview, we were at times complicit through our silence. This may have been to further a certain notion of ‘objectivity’ itself whereby the building and maintenance of rapport is essential to surfacing a participant’s real views. This then raises the questions: What are the ethical questions that the suppression of certain viewpoints and reactions pose? How does the building, maintenance and continuance of rapport inform the research findings? Rapport, then, comes in all shapes and sizes and its manifold forms implicate the research process differently. Another critical question to be addressed is - why does some rapport take less work than others? With platform companies, building rapport came by easier than it did with workers both on and off platforms. If understood as removing degrees of distance between the researcher and participants, several factors could play into the effort required to build rapport. For instance, language was a critical determinant of the ease of relationship-building. Being more fluent in English than in colloquial Hindi enabled clearer articulation of the research. Further, familiarity with the research process was, as expected, mediated along class lines. This influenced the manner in which we articulated research outcomes and objectives to workers with complete unfamiliarity with the meaning of research. Among workers, this unfamiliarity often resulted in distrust, which required the underlying politics of the research to be more critically articulated.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">By and large, the feminist engagement with research methods has been quite successful in its resistance and transformation of traditional forms. Since Oakley’s conception of the interview as a deeply subjective space<a href="https://www.genderit.org/articles/doing-standpoint-theory#sdfootnote13sym">13</a> and Harding’s dialectical conception of masculinist science through its history<a href="https://www.genderit.org/articles/doing-standpoint-theory#sdfootnote14sym">14</a>, the application of feminist critical theory has increasingly subverted assumptions around the averseness of research to political motivations. At the same time, it has made knowledge-production occur in a more equitable space. It is in this context that standpoint theory has had wide purchase, but challenges persist in its application. As the foregoing discussion outlines, we have been able to achieve some of the goals of feminist standpoint research while missing out on others. We also found the ‘multiple standpoints’ approach of relativists to be useful in a project involving multiple stakeholders - thereby also avoiding the risk of essentialisation of the identities of domestic workers. However, unlike the tendency of relativists to focus on each perspective as ‘equally valid truth’, we are choosing to focus on the conflicts and intersections between emerging discourses. Through this hybrid theoretical framework, we are seeking to make knowledge production more equitable. At the same time, the discussion around rapport shows that this may nevertheless happen in a limited fashion. Feminist research may never be fully non-extractive. The reflexivity exercised and choices made during the course of the research are key.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Unlike the tendency of relativists to focus on each perspective as ‘equally valid truth’, we are choosing to focus on the conflicts and intersections between emerging discourses.</p>
<hr />
<div id="sdfootnote1">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a name="sdfootnote1sym"></a> The names of the authors are in alphabetical order.</p>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote2">
<p><a name="sdfootnote2sym"></a> Harding, S. (2003) The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies, Routledge.</p>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote3">
<p><a name="sdfootnote3sym"></a> M. Wickramasinghe, Feminist Research Methodology: Making meaning out of meaning-making, Zubaan, 2014</p>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote4">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a name="sdfootnote4sym"></a> Pease, D. (2000) Researching profeminist men's narratives: participatory methodologies in a postmodern frame. In B. Fawcett, D. Featherstone, J. Fook ll)'ld A. Rossiter (eds) Restarching and Practising in Social Work: Postmodern Feminist Perspectives (London: Routledge).</p>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote5">
<p><a name="sdfootnote5sym"></a> Stanley, L. and Wise, S. (1983) Breaking Out: Feminist Consciousness and Feminist Research (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul).</p>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote6">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a name="sdfootnote6sym"></a> Rege, S. 1998. ” Dalit Women Talk Differently: A critique of ‘Difference’ and Towards a Dalit Feminist Standpoint.” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 33, No.44, pp 39-48.</p>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote7">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a name="sdfootnote7sym"></a> Heeks, R. and Shekhar, S. (2018) An Applied Data Justice Framework: Analysing Datafication and Marginalised Communities in Cities of the Global South. Working Paper Series, Centre for Development Informatics, University of Manchester.</p>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote8">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a name="sdfootnote8sym"></a> Stone, E. and Priestley, M. (1996) Parasites, pawn and partners: disability research and the role of nondisabled researchers. British Journal of Sociology, 47(4), 699-716.</p>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote9">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a name="sdfootnote9sym"></a> Evans, L. (2010). Professionalism, professionality and the development of education professionals. Br. J. Educ. Stud. 56, 20–38. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8527.2007.00392.x</p>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote10">
<p><a name="sdfootnote10sym"></a> Webb C. Feminist methodology in nursing research. J Adv Nurs. 1984 May;9(3):249-56.</p>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote11">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a name="sdfootnote11sym"></a> Berger, R. (2015). Now I see it, now I don’t: researcher’s position and reflexivity in qualitative research. Qual. Res. 15, 219–234. doi:10.1177/1468794112468475; Pitts, M. J., and Miller-Day, M. (2007). Upward turning points and positive rapport development across time in researcher-participant relationships. Qual. Res. 7, 177–201. doi:10.1177/1468794107071409</p>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote12">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a name="sdfootnote12sym"></a> Dunscombe, J., and Jessop, J. (2002). “Doing rapport, and the ethics of ’faking friendship’,” in <i>Ethics in Qualitative Research</i>, eds T. Miller, M. Birch, M. Mauthner, and J. Jessop (London: SAGE), 108–121.</p>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote13">
<p><a name="sdfootnote13sym"></a> Oakley, A. (1981). “Interviewing women: a contradiction in terms?” in Doing Feminist Research, ed. H. Roberts (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), 30–61.</p>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote14">
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a name="sdfootnote14sym"></a> Harding, S. (1986). The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.</p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ambika-tandon-and-aayush-rathi-gender-it-september-1-2019-doing-standpoint-theory'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ambika-tandon-and-aayush-rathi-gender-it-september-1-2019-doing-standpoint-theory</a>
</p>
No publisherAmbika Tandon and Aayush RathiGenderInternet Governance2019-09-19T14:22:48ZBlog Entry Lecture at International Summer School, Delhi
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/lecture-at-international-summer-school-delhi
<b>Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi, on July 12, 2019, delivered a lecture at the International Summer School, Delhi.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The ISS is in its 6th year now, and is convened annually as a six week academic program. The ISS is held in affiliation with the Department of Political Science at Jamia Millia Islamia - A Central University (JMI) and with regular support from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) over the years.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The lecture formed a part of the Innovation, Technology and the Future of Work course module at this year's edition. The speakers focused specifically on placing an intersectional lens to drive home the point that there will be not one future of work, but multiple. And how it is that we can begin to interrogate the various competing narratives that are being propagated. Ambika and Aayush also focused on how the present gendered ordering of the labour market stands to be reproduced in the various shapes work will take going forward.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The presentation can be <a class="external-link" href="https://www.beautiful.ai/player/-Lja51_8y4yH-LaqQPLT/Aayush-and-Ambika-ISS-lecture">accessed here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/lecture-at-international-summer-school-delhi'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/lecture-at-international-summer-school-delhi</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminFuture of WorkInternet GovernanceGender2019-07-22T01:11:00ZNews Item Presentation to Amnesty International on researching the Future of Work
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/presentation-to-amnesty-international-on-researching-the-future-of-work
<b>Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon made a presentation to Amnesty International on July 18, 2019. </b>
<p class="moz-quote-pre" style="text-align: justify; ">Amnesty International is in the midst of designing its next big global strategy and were seeking inputs to 5 key questions (attached here). They were soliciting provocations to make sure that future of work issues are not left out of their vision and future strategy. Also invited was Will Stronge, director of Autonomy, a think tank in the UK. While he spoke about Autonomy's work that looks at future of work as enmeshed with climate change issues, we brought in a global South perspective and also made a case for why looking at gender is crucial, and why there is a need for methodological innovation in the study of the future of work. Click <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/cis-amnesty-presentation">to view the presentation</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/presentation-to-amnesty-international-on-researching-the-future-of-work'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/presentation-to-amnesty-international-on-researching-the-future-of-work</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminGenderInternet GovernanceFuture of Work2019-07-21T15:23:52ZNews ItemWorkshop on Feminist Information Infrastructure
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ambika-tandon-may-9-2019-workshop-on-feminist-information-infrastructure
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) organised a workshop on feminist infrastructure in collaboration with Blank Noise and Sangama, on 29th October, 2018. The purpose of the workshop was to disseminate the findings from a two-month long project being undertaken by researchers at Blank Noise and Sangama, with research support and training from CIS. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A group of five researchers, one from Blank Noise and four from Sangama, presented their research on different aspects of feminist infrastructure. The workshop was attended by a diverse group of participants, including activists, academics, and representatives from civil society organisations and trade unions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Feminist infrastructure is a broadly conceptualised term referring to infrastructure that is designed by, and keeping in mind the needs of, diverse social groups with different kinds of marginality. In the field of technology, efforts to conceptualise feminist infrastructure have ranged from rethinking basic technological infrastructure, such as feminist spectrum , to community networks and tools for mobilisation . This project aimed to explore the imagination of feminist infrastructure in the context of different marginalities and lived experiences. Rather than limiting intersectionality to the subject of the research, as with most other feminist projects, this project aimed to produce knowledge from the ‘standpoint’ of those with the lived experience of marginalisation.</p>
<hr />
<p>This report by Ambika Tandon was edited by Gurshabad Grover and designed by Saumyaa Naidu. The full report can be <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/feminist-information-infrastructure">downloaded here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ambika-tandon-may-9-2019-workshop-on-feminist-information-infrastructure'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ambika-tandon-may-9-2019-workshop-on-feminist-information-infrastructure</a>
</p>
No publisherambikaGenderInternet Governance2019-07-09T15:35:24ZBlog EntryFeminist Internet Research Network (FIRN) Convening Design
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/firn-convening-design
<b>Ambika Tandon attended a workshop organized by Association for Progressive Communications for grantees of the Feminist Internet Research Network as a panelist on a session on feminist research methods.. The workshop was held from 27 February to 1 March, in Malaysia. Represented from 8 organizations attended the workshop.</b>
<h3>Objectives of the convenining</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">To inaugurate a network of feminist researcher in the field of digital technology for ongoing collaboration, advice and active solidarity.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">To start trust building within the network through shared values and plot how it will work and how it will expand.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">To facilitate exchange of learnings and capacity building among the network members and other resource persons, in particular.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">To facilitate peer-feedback, collaboration and interdisciplinary discussions on research design, methodologies and research plans of the selected projects and other resource persons.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">To get feedback on overall FIRN project research methodology/design.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">To explore new and innovative methods, as well as get understand key developments and challenges in more established ways of collecting and analysing data in the four areas of the research initiative.</li>
</ul>
<div>For more information <a class="external-link" href="https://www.apc.org/en/feminist-internet-research-network-call-research-proposals">click here</a></div>
<ul>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/firn-convening-design'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/firn-convening-design</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminGenderInternet Governance2019-03-01T01:08:54ZNews ItemImagine a Feminist Internet: Research, Practice and Policy in South Asia
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/imagine-a-feminist-internet-research-practice-and-policy-in-south-asia
<b>Internet Democracy Project and Point of View co-organized a two-day Imagine a Feminist Internet event in Sri Lanka on 22011 and 22 February 2019. Ambika Tandon was a speaker and presented a paper 'Framing Reproductive Health as a Data Problem? Unpacking ‘Dataveillance’ in India' which was co-authored by herself and Aayush Rathi.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The panel also had a presentation by Dr. Anja Kovacs, and was moderated by Eva Blum-Dumontet from Privacy International. Ambika also participated in a committee that drafted a declaration for policymakers based on the presentations at the conference, which is yet to be finalised. The agenda can be <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/ifi-draft-agenda">seen here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/imagine-a-feminist-internet-research-practice-and-policy-in-south-asia'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/imagine-a-feminist-internet-research-practice-and-policy-in-south-asia</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminGenderInternet Governance2019-02-27T01:52:55ZNews ItemUnbox Festival 2019: CIS organizes two Workshops
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/unbox-2019-festival
<b>Centre for Internet & Society organized two workshops at the Unbox Festival 2019, in Bangalore, on 15 and 17 February 2019. </b>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">'What is your Feminist Infrastructure Wishlist?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The first workshop 'What is your Feminist Infrastructure Wishlist?' was on Feminist Infrastructure Wishlists that was conducted by P.P. Sneha and Saumyaa Naidu on 15 February 2019. The objective of the workshop was to explore what it means to have infrastructure that is feminist. How do we build spaces, networks, and systems that are equal, inclusive, diverse, and accessible? We will also reflect on questions of network configurations, expertise, labour and visibility. For reading material <a class="external-link" href="https://feministinternet.org/">click here</a>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">AI for Good</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With a backdrop of AI for social good, we explore existing applications of artificial intelligence, how we interact and engage with this technology on a daily basis. A discussion led by Saumyaa Naidu and Shweta Mohandas invited participants to examine current narratives around AI and imagine how these may transform with time. Questions around how we can build an AI for the future will become the starting point to trace its implications relating to social impact, policy, gender, design, and privacy. For reading materials see <a class="external-link" href="https://ainowinstitute.org/AI_Now_2018_Report.pdf">AI Now Report 2018</a>, <a class="external-link" href="https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing">Machine Bias</a>, and <a class="external-link" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/03/why-do-so-many-digital-assistants-have-feminine-names/475884/">Why Do So Many Digital Assistants Have Feminine Names?</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For info on Unbox Festival, <a class="external-link" href="http://unboxfestival.com/">click here</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/unbox-2019-festival'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/unbox-2019-festival</a>
</p>
No publishersaumyaaGenderInternet GovernanceArtificial Intelligence2019-02-26T01:53:39ZBlog EntryFeminist Methodology in Technology Research: A Literature Review
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ambika-tandon-december-23-2018-feminist-methodology-in-technology-research
<b>This literature review has been authored by Ambika Tandon, with contributions from Mukta Joshi. Research assistance was provided by Kumarjeet Ray and Navya Sharma. The publication has been designed by Saumyaa Naidu.</b>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Abstract</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Feminist research methodology is a vast body of knowledge, spanning across multiple disciplines including sociology, media studies, and critical legal studies. This literature review aims to understand key aspects of feminist methodology across these disciplines, with a particular focus on research on technology and its interaction with society. Stemming from the argument that the ontological notion of objectivity effaces power relations in the process of knowledge production, feminist research is critical of the subjects, producers, and nature of knowledge. Section I of the literature review explores this argument along with a range of theoretical concepts, such as standpoint theory and historical materialism, as well as principles of feminist research derived from these, such as intersectionality and reflexivity.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Given its critique of the "god's eye view" (Madhok and Evans, 2014) of objectivist research, feminist scholars have largely developed qualitative methods that are more conducive to acknowledgement of power hierarchies. Additionally, some scholars have recognised the political value in quantification of inequalities such as the wage gap, and have developed intersectional quantitative methods that aim at narrowing down measurable inequalities. Both sets of methods are explored in Section II of the literature review, interspersed with examples from research focused on technology.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Introduction</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">According to authoritative accounts on the subject, while research focused on gender or women predates its arrival, the field of ‘feminist methodology’ explores questions of epistemology and ontology of research and knowledge. Initiated in scholarship arising out of the second wave of North American feminism, it theoretically anchors itself in the post-modernist and post-structuralist traditions. It additionally critiques positivism for being a project furthering patriarchal oppression. North American feminist scholars critique traditional methods within the social sciences from an epistemological perspective, for producing acontextual and ahistorical knowledge, replicating the tendency of positivist science to enumerate and measure subjective social phenomena. This, according to them, leads to the invisiblising of the web of power relations within which the ‘known’ and ‘knower’ in knowledge production are placed. This is then used to devise methods and underlying principles and ethics for conducting more egalitarian research, aimed at achieving goals of social justice.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The second wave feminist movement was itself critiqued by Black and other feminists from the global South for being exclusionary of non-white and heterosexual identities. Given its origins in the global North, scholars from the South have interrogated the meaning of feminism and feminist research in their context. Some African scholars even detail difficulty in disclosing a project as feminist publicly due to popular resistance to the term feminism, which stems from it being rejected by certain social groups as an alien social movement that’s antithetical to their “African cultural values." Their own critique of “White feminism” comes from its essentialization of womanhood and the resultant negation of the (neo)colonial and racialised histories of African women. This has led scholars from the global South to critically interrogate feminism and feminist methods. They acknowledge the multiplicity of feminisms, and initiate creative inquiries into different forms of feminist methodology. Feminist researchers that work in contexts of political violence, instability, repression, scarcity of resources, poor infrastructure, and/or lack of social security, have pointed out that traditional research methods assume conditions that are largely absent in their realities, leading them to experiment with feminist research.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Feminist research across these variety of contexts raises ontological and epistemological concerns about traditional research methods and underlying assumptions about what can be known, who can know, and the nature of knowledge itself. It argues that knowledge production has historically led to the creation of epistemic hierarchies, wherein certain actors are designated as ‘knowers’ and others as the ‘known’. Such hierarchies wreak epistemic violence upon marginalised subjects by denying them the agency to produce knowledge, and delegitimize forms of knowledge that aren’t normative. Acknowledging the role of power in knowledge production has the radical implication that the subjectivities of the researchers and the researched inherently find their way into research and more broadly, knowledge production. This challenges the objectivity and “god’s eye view” of traditional humanistic knowledge and its processes of production. Feminist research eschews scientifically orthodox notions of how “valid knowledge will look”, and creates novel resources for understanding epistemic marginalization of various kinds. It then provides a myriad of tools to disrupt structural hierarchies through and within knowledge production and dissemination.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Feminist research, given its evolution from living movements and theoretical debates, remains a contested domain. It has reformulated a range of qualitative and quantitative research methods, and also surfaced its own, such as experimental and action-based. What these have in common are theoretical dispositions to identify, critique, and ultimately dismantle power relations within and through research projects. It is thus “critical, political, and praxis oriented. Several disciplines with the social sciences, such as feminist technology studies, cyberfeminism, and cultural anthropology, have built feminist approaches to the study of technology and technologically mediated social relations. However, this continues to remain a minor strand of research on technology.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This literature review aims to address that gap through scoping of such methods and their application in technological research. Feminist methodology provides a critical lens that allows us to explore questions and areas in technology-based research that are inaccessible by traditional methods. This paper draws on examples from technology-focused research, covering key interdisciplinary feminist methods across fields such as gender studies, sociology, development, and ICT for development. In doing so, it actively constructs a history of feminist methodology through authoritative sources of knowledge.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Read the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/feminist-methodoloty-in-technology-research.pdf" class="internal-link">full paper here</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ambika-tandon-december-23-2018-feminist-methodology-in-technology-research'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ambika-tandon-december-23-2018-feminist-methodology-in-technology-research</a>
</p>
No publisherambikaGenderInternet Governance2018-12-25T15:18:21ZBlog EntryEvent Report on Intermediary Liability and Gender Based Violence
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/intermediary-liability-and-gender-based-violence
<b>This report is a summary of the proceedings of the Roundtable Conference organized by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) at the Digital Citizen Summit, an annual summit organized by the Digital Empowerment Foundation. It was conducted at the India International Centre in New Delhi on November 1, 2018 from 11.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.</b>
<p>With inputs and edited by Ambika Tandon. Click here to download the <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/intermediary-liability-and-gender-based-violence-report">PDF</a></p>
<hr />
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p><strong>Background</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The topic of discussion was intermediary liability and Gender Based Violence (GBV), the debate on GBV globally and in India evolving to include myriad forms of violence in online spaces in the past few years. This ranges from violence native to the digital, such as identity theft, and extensions of traditional forms of violence, such as online harassment, cyberbullying, and cyberstalking<a name="_ftnref1" href="#_ftn1"><sup>[1]</sup></a>. Given the extent of personal data available online, cyber attacks have led to a variety of financial and personal harms.<a name="_ftnref2" href="#_ftn2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> Studies have explored the extent of psychological and even physical harm to victims, which has been found to have similar effects to violence in the physical world<a name="_ftnref3" href="#_ftn3"><sup>[3]</sup></a>. Despite this, technologically-facilitated violence is often ignored or trivialised. When present, redressal mechanisms are often inadequate, further exacerbating the effects of violence on victims.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">TheRoundtable explored ways of how intermediaries can help tackle gender based violence and discussed attempts at making the Internet a safer place for women which can ultimately help make it a gender equal environment. It also analyzed the key concerns of privacy and security leading the conversation to how we can demand more from platforms for our protection and how best to regulate them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The roundtable had four female and one male participants from various civil society organisations working on rights in the digital space.</p>
<h2>Roundtable Discussion</h2>
<h3>Online Abuse</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The discussion commenced with the acknowledgement of it being well documented that women and sexual minorities face a disproportionate level of violence in the digital space, as an extension/reproduction of physical space. GBV exists on a continuum from the physical, verbal, and technologically enabled, either partially or fully, with overflowing boundaries and deep interconnections between different kinds of violence. Some forms of traditional violence such as harassment, stalking, bullying, sex trafficking, extend themselves into the digital realm while other forms are uniquely tech enabled like doxxing and morphing of imagery. Due to this considerations of anonymity, privacy, and consent, need to be re-thought in the context of tech enabled GBV. These come into play in a situation where the technological realm has largely been corporatised and functions under the imperative of treating the user and their data as the final product.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It was noted early on that GBV online can be a misnomer because it can be across a number of spaces and, the participants concentrated on laying down the specific contours of tech mediated or tech enabled violence. One of the discussants stated that the term GBV is a not a useful one since it does not encompass everything that is talked about when referring to online abuse. The phenomenon that gets the most traction is trolling on social media or abuse on social media. This is partly because it is the most visible people who are affected by it, and also since often, it is the most difficult to treat under law. In a 2012 study by the Internet Democracy Project focusing on online verbal abuse in social media, every woman they interviewed started by asserting that she is not a victim. The challenge with using the GBV framework is that it positions the woman as a victim. Other incidents on social media such as verbal abuse where there are rape threats or death threats, especially when there is an indication that the perpetrator is aware of the physical location of the victim, need to be treated differently from say online trolling.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Further, certain forms of violence, such as occurrences of ‘revenge porn’ or the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, including rape videos are easier to fit within the description of GBV. It is important to make these distinctions because the remedies then should be commensurate with perceived harm. It is not appropriate to club all of these together since the criminal threshold for each act is different. Whereas being called a “slut” or a “bitch” would not be enough for someone to be arrested, if a woman is called that repetitively by a large number of people the commensurate harm could be quite significant. Thus, using GBV as a broad term for all forms of violence ends up invisiblising certain forms of violence and prevents a more nuanced treatment of the discussion.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In response to this, a participant highlighted the normalisation of gendered hate speech, to the extent of lack of recognition as a form of hate speech. This lacunae in our law stems from the fact that we inherited our hate speech laws from a colonial era where it was based on the grounds of incitement of violence, more so physical violence. As a result, we do not take the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) standard of incitement to discrimination. If the law was based on an incitement to discriminate point of view then acts of trolling could come under hate speech. Even in the United Kingdom where there is higher sentencing for gender based crime as compared to other markers of identity such as race, gender does not fall under the parameters of hate speech. This can also be attributed to the threshold at which criminalization kicks in for such acts.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A significant aspect of online verbal abuse pointed out by a participant was that it does not affect all women equally. In a study, the Twitter accounts of 12 publicly visible women across the political spectrum were looked at for 2 weeks in early December, 2017. They were filtered against keywords and analyzed for abusive content. One Muslim woman in the study had extremely high levels of abuse, being consistently addressed as “Jihad man, Jihad didi or Jihad biwi”. According to the participant, she is also the least likely to get justice through the criminal system for such vitriol and as such, this disparity in the likelihood of facing online abuse and accessing official redressal mechanisms should be recognized. Another discussant reaffirmed the importance of making a distinction between online abuse against someone as opposed to gender based violence online where the threat itself is gendered.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In a small ethnographic study with the Bangalore police undertaken by one of the participants, the police were asked for their opinion on the following situation: A women voluntarily providers photos of herself in a relationship and once the relationship is over, the man distributes it. Is there a cause for redressal?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Policemen responded that since she gave it voluntarily in the first instance, the burden of the consequences is now on her. So even in a feminist framework of consent and agency where we have laws for actions of voyeurism and publishing photos of private parts, it is not being recognized by institutional response mechanisms.</p>
<h3>Intermediary Liability</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Private communications based intermediaries can be understood to be of two types: those that enable the carriage/transmission of communications and provide access to the internet, and those that host third party content. The latter have emerged as platforms that are central to the exercising of voice, the exchange of information and knowledge, and even the mobilisation of social movements. The norms and regulations around what constitutes gender based violence in this realm is then shaped not only by state regulations, but content moderation standards of these intermediaries. Further, the kinds of preventive tools and tools providing redressal are controlled by these platforms. More than before, we are looking deeper into the role of these companies that function as intermediaries and control access to third party content without performing editorial functions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In the Intermediary Liability framework in the United States formulated in the 1990s, the intermediaries that were envisioned were not the intermediaries we have now. With time, the intermediary today is able to access and possess your data while urging a certain kind of behaviour from you. There is then an intermediary design duty which is not currently accounted for by the law. Moreover, the law practices a one size fits all regime whereas what could be more suitable is having approached tailored as per the offence. So for child pornography, a ‘removal when uploaded’ action using artificial intelligence or machine learning is appropriate but a notice and takedown approach is better for other kinds of content takedown.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Globally, another facet is that of safe harbour provisions for platforms. When intermediaries such as Google and Facebook were established, they were thought of as neutral pipes since they were not creating the content but only facilitating access. However, as they have scaled and as their role in ecosystem has increased, they are now one of the intervention points for governments as gatekeepers of free speech. One needs to be careful in asking for an expansion of the role and responsibilities of platforms because then complementary to that we will also have to see that the frameworks regulating them need to be revisited. Additionally, would a similar standard be applicable to larger and smaller intermediaries, or do we need layers of distinction between their responsibilities? Internet platforms such as the GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) yield exceptional power to dictate what discourse takes place and this translates into the the online and offline divide disappearing. Do we then hold these four intermediaries to a separate and higher standard? If not, then all small players will be held to stringent rules disadvantaging their functioning and ultimately, stifling innovation. Thus, regulation is definitely needed but instead of a uniform one, one that’s layered and tailor-made to different situations and platform visibility levels could be more useful.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Some participants shared the opinion that because these intermediaries are based in foreign countries and have primary legal obligations there, the insulation plays out in the citizen’s benefit. It lends itself a layer of freedom of speech and expression that is not present in the substantive law, rule of law framework or the institutional culture in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Child pornography is an area where platforms are taking a lot of responsibility. Google has spoken about how they have been using machine learning algorithms to block 40% of such content and Microsoft is also working on a similar process. If we argue for more intervention from platforms, we simultaneously also need to look at their machine learning algorithms. Concerns of how these algorithms are being deployed and further, being incorporated into the framework of controlling child pornography are relevant since there is not much accountability and transparency regarding the same.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Another fraction that has emerged from recent events is the divide between traditional form of media and new media. Taking the example of rape victims and sexual harassment claims, there are strict rules regarding the kinds of details that can be disclosed and the manner in which this is to be done. In the Kathua rape case, for instance, the Delhi High Court sent a notice to Twitter and Facebook for revealing details because there are norms around this even though they have not been applicable to platforms. Hence, there are certain regulations that apply to old media that have now escaped in the frameworks applicable to the new media and at some level that gap needs to be bridged.</p>
<h3>Role of Law</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">One of the participants brought up the question; what is the proper role of the law and does it come first or last? In case of the latter, the burden then falls upon the kind of standard setting that we do as a society. The role of platforms as an entity in mediating the online environment was discussed, given the concerns that have been highlighted about this environment, especially for women. The third thing to be considered is whether we run the risk of enforcing patriarchal behaviour by doubling down on the either of the two aforementioned factors. If legal standards are made too harsh they may end up reinforcing a power structure that is essentially dominated by upper caste men who comprise a majority of staff within law enforcement and the judiciary. Even though the subordinate judiciary do have mahila courts now, the application of the law seems to reify the position of the woman as the victim. This also brings up the question of who can become a victim within such frameworks, where selective bias such as elements of chastity come to play as court functions are undertaken.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">An assessment of the way criminal law in India is used to stifle free speech was carried out in 2013 and repeated in 2018, illustrating how censorship law is used to stifle voices of minorities and people critical of the political establishment. Even though it is perhaps time to revisit the earlier conceptualizations of intermediaries as neutral pipes, it is concerning to look at the the court cases regarding safe harbour in India. Many of them are carried out with the ostensible objective of protecting women's rights. In <em>Kamlesh Vaswani V Union of India</em>, the petition claims that porn is a threat to Indian women and culture, ignoring the reality that many women watch porn as well. Pornhub releases figures on viewership every year, and of the entirety of Indian subscribers one third are women. This is not taken into account in such petitions. In <em>Prajwala V Union of India,</em> an NGO sent the Supreme Court a letter raising concerns about videos of sexual violence being distributed on the internet. The letter sought to bring attention to the existence of such videos, as well as their rampant circulation on online platforms. At some point in the proceedings, the Court wanted the intermediaries to use keywords to take down content and keeping aside poor implementation, the rationale behind such a move is problematic in itself. For instance, if you choose sex as one of those words then all sexual education will disappear from the Internet. There are many problems with court encouraged filtering systems like one where a system automatically tells you when a rape video goes up. The question arises of how will you distinguish between a video that was consensually made depicting sexual activities and a rape video. The narrow minded responses to the Sabu Mathew and Prajwala cases originate in the conservative culture regarding sexual activity prevalent in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In a research project undertaken by one of the participants in the course of their work, they made a suggestion to include gender, sexuality and disability as grounds for hate speech while working with women’s rights activists and civil society organisations. This suggestion was not well received as they vehemently opposed more regulation. In their opinion, the laws that India has in place are not being upheld and creating new laws will not change if the implementation of legislation is flawed. For instance, even though the Supreme Court stuck down S.66A, Internet Freedom Foundation has earlier provided instances of its continued usage by police officers to file complaints.<a name="_ftnref4" href="#_ftn4"><sup><sup>[4]</sup></sup></a> Hate speech laws can be used to both ends, even though unlike in the US they do not determine whose speech they want to protect. Consequently, in the US a white supremacist gets as much protection as a Black Lives Matter activist but in India, that is not the case. The latest Law Commission Report on hate speech in India tries to make progress by incorporating the ICCPR view of incitement to discriminate and include dignity in the harms. It specifically speaks about hate speech against women saying that it does not always end up in violence but does result in a harm to dignity and standing in society. Often, protectionist forms of speech such as hate speech often end up hurting the people it aims to protect by reinforcing stereotypes.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Point of View undertook a study where they looked at the use of S.67 in the Information Technology (IT) Act which criminalizes obscene speech when you use a medium covered by the IT, in which they found that the section was used to criminalize political speech. In many censorship cases, the people who those provisions benefit are the ones in power.<a name="_ftnref5" href="#_ftn5"><sup><sup>[5]</sup></sup></a> For instance in S.67, obscenity provisions do not protect women's rights, they protect morality of society. Even though these are done in the name of protecting women, when a woman herself decides that she wants to publish a revealing picture of herself online, it is disallowed by the law. That kind of control of sexuality is part of a larger patriarchal framework which does not support women's rights or recognise her sexuality. However, under Indian law, there are quite a few robust provisions for image based abuse, and there is some recognition of women in particular being vulnerable to it. S.66A of the IT Act specifically recognizes that it is a criminal activity to share images of someone’s private parts without their consent. This then also encompasses instances of ‘revenge porn’. That provision has been in place in India since 2008, in contrast to the US where half the states still do not have such a provision. Certain kinds of vulnerability have adequate recognition in the law, thus one should be wary of calls of censorship and lowering the standards for criminalizing speech.</p>
<h3>Non-legal interventions</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This section centres around the discussions of redressal mechanisms that can be used to address some of the forms of violence which do not emanate from the law. All of the participants emphasized the importance of creating safe spaces through non-legal interventions. It was debated whether there is a need to always approach the law or if it is possible to categorize forms of online violence according to the gravity of the violation committed. These can be in the form of community solutions where law is treated as the last resort. For instance, there was support for using community tools such as ‘feminist trollback’ where humor can be used to troll the trolls. Trolls feed on the fear of being trolled, so the harm can be mitigated by using community initiatives wherein the target can respond to the trolls with the help of other people in the community. It was reiterated that non technical and legal interventions are needed not only from the perspective of power relations within these spaces but also access to the spaces in the first place. Accordingly, the government should work on initiatives that get more women online and focus on policies that makes smartphones and data services more accessible. This would also be a good method to increase the safety of women and benefit from the strength in numbers.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In cases of the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, law can be the primary forum but in cases of trolling and other social media abuse, the question was raised - should we enhance the role of the intermediary platforms? Being the first point of intervention, their responsibility should be more than it currently is. However this would require them to act in the nature of police or judiciary and necessitate an examination of their algorithms. A large proportion of the designers of such algorithms are white males, which increases the possibility of their biases against women of colour for instance, to feed into the algorithms and reinforce a power structure that lacks accountability.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Participants questioned the lack of privacy in design with the example in mind being of how registrars do not make domain owner details private by default. Users have to pay an additional fee for not exposing their details to public and the notion of having to pay for privacy is unsettling. There is no information being provided during the purchasing of the domain name about the privacy feature as well. It was acknowledged that for audit and law enforcement purposes it is imperative to have the information of the owner of a domain name and their details since in cases of websites selling fake medicines, arms or hosting child pornography. Thus, it boils down to the kind of information necessary for law enforcement. Global domain name rules also impact privacy on the national level. The process of ascertaining the suitability and necessity of different kinds of information excludes ordinary citizens since all the consultations take place between the regulatory authority and the state. This makes it difficult for citizens to participate and contribute to this space without government approval.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Issues were flagged against community standards in that the violence that occurs to women is also because the harms are not equal for all. Further, some users are targeted specifically because of the community they come from or the views they have. Often also because, they represent a ‘type’ of a woman that does not adhere to the ‘ideal’ of a woman held by the perpetrator. Unfortunately community standards do not recognise differential harms towards certain communities in India or globally. Twitter, for example, regularly engages in shadow banning and targets people who do not conform to the moral views prevalent in that society where the platform is engaging in censorship. We know these instances occur only when our community members notice and notify us of the same. There is a certain amount of labor that the community has already put in flagging instances of these violations to the intermediary which also needs recognition. In this situation, Twitter is disproportionately handling how it engages with the two entities in question. Community standards could thus become a double edged sword without adding additional protections for certain disadvantaged communities.</p>
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Currently, intermediaries are considered neutral pipes through which content flows and hence have no liability as long as they do not perform editorial functions. This has also been useful in ensuring that the freedom of speech is not harmed. However, given their potential ability to remedy this problem, as well as the fact that intermediaries sometimes benefit financially from such activities, it is important to look at the intermediaries’ responsibility in addressing these instances of violence. Governments across the world have taken different approaches to this question<a name="_ftnref6" href="#_ftn6"><sup><sup>[6]</sup></sup></a>. Models, such as in the US, where intermediaries have been solely responsible to institute redressal mechanisms have proven to be ineffectual. On the other hand, in Thailand, where intermediaries are held primarily liable for content, the monitoring of content has led to several free speech harms.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">People are increasingly looking at other forms of social intervention to combat online abuse since technological and legal ones do not completely address and resolve the myriad issues emanating from this umbrella term. There is also a need to make the law gender sensitive as well as improving the execution of laws at ground level, possibly through sensitisation of law enforcement authorities. Gender based violence as a catchall phrase does not do justice to the full spectrum of experiences that victims face, especially women and sexual minorities. Often these do not attract criminal punishment given the restricted framework of the current law and need to be seen through the prism of hate speech to strengthen these provisions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Some actions within GBV receive more attention than others and as a consequence, these are the ones platforms and governments are most concerned with regulating. Considerations of free speech and censorship and the role of intermediaries in being the flag bearers of either has translated into growing calls for greater responsibility to be taken by these players. The roundtable raised some key concerns regarding revisiting intermediary liability within the context of the scale of the platforms, their content moderation policies and machine learning algorithms.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn1" href="#_ftnref1"><sup><sup>[1]</sup></sup></a> <em>See </em>Khalil Goga, “How to tackle gender-based violence online”, World Economic Forum, 18 February 2015, <<a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/02/how-to-tackle-gender-based-violence-online/">https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/02/how-to-tackle-gender-based-violence-online/</a>>. <em>See also</em> Shiromi Pinto, “What is online violence and abuse against women?”, 20 November 2017, Amnest International, <<a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/what-is-online-violence-and-abuse-against-women/">https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/what-</a><a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/what-is-online-violence-and-abuse-against-women/">is-online-violence-and-abuse-against-women/</a>>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn2" href="#_ftnref2"><sup><sup>[2]</sup></sup></a> Nidhi Tandon, et. al., “Cyber Violence Against Women and Girls: A worldwide wake up call”, UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development Working Group on Broadband and Gender, <<a href="http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/images/wsis/GenderReport2015FINAL.pdf">http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/images/wsis/GenderReport2015FINAL.pdf</a>></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn3" href="#_ftnref3"><sup><sup>[3]</sup></sup></a> <em>See</em> Azmina Dhrodia, “Unsocial Media: The Real Toll of Online Abuse against Women”, Amnesty Global Insights Blog, <<a href="https://medium.com/amnesty-insights/unsocial-media-the-real-toll-of-online-abuse-against-women-37134ddab3f4">https://medium.com/amnesty-insights/unsocial-media-the-real-toll-of-online-abuse-against-women-37134ddab3f4</a>></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn4" href="#_ftnref4"><sup><sup>[4]</sup></sup></a> <em>See</em> Abhinav Sekhri and Apar Gupta, “Section 66A and other legal zombies”, Internet Freedom Foundation Blog, <https://internetfreedom.in/66a-zombie/?</p>
<p><a name="_ftn5" href="#_ftnref5"><sup><sup>[5]</sup></sup></a> See Bishakha Datta “Guavas and Genitals”, Point of View <https://itforchange.net/e-vaw/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Smita_Vanniyar.pdf></p>
<p><a name="_ftn6" href="#_ftnref6"><sup><sup>[6]</sup></sup></a> ‘Examining Technology-Mediated Violence Against Women Through a Feminist Framework: Towards appropriate legal-institutional responses in India’, Gurumurthy et al., January 2018.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/intermediary-liability-and-gender-based-violence'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/intermediary-liability-and-gender-based-violence</a>
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No publisherakritiGenderInternet Governance2018-12-21T07:16:41ZBlog Entry