Digital spaces as contested sites for activism

Digital technology has become a vital part of our everyday lives shaping our interactions with one another. This research paper examines how these technologies particularly ‘digital spaces’1 like Twitter (X), Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram etcetera which have become vital in activism are also sites of gendered relations that expose women to backlash. Relying on the theories of techno-feminism and intersectionality, I examine how the intersectional identities of these women exacerbate their experiences of backlash and the social conditions that shape their responses. Through this research, I draw attention to the gendered nature of digital spaces that are embedded in society, and how they are being used to censor women’s speech and police their actions to ensure conformity with gendered norms. I use semi-structured interviews to center the voices of 16 African women from Nigeria, Senegal, and Kenya. My findings reveal that the everyday acts of these women are a form of activism that makes them targets of backlash online and this challenges dominant narratives of what activism is and who is an activist. My findings reveal that when these women decide to either respond with silence or with words, their identities, and social circumstances become vital to how they make this decision. In this way, these women can either choose silence as a subverted agentic act that benefits them but emboldens the abusers or choose to engage the abuser risking further backlash. Through my research, I call for the rethinking of silence not as helplessness but as a subverted agentic act that women use to protect themselves as well as safeguard their activism online. This research contributes to the literature on online backlash by focusing on African women in Low- and Middle-Income countries. This research is distinct from other studies that examine the gendered impact of technology using the techno-feminism theory because it critiques the theory by calling attention to how its emphasis on external factors makes it difficult to effectively capture the nuances, and intersectional lives of African women, and how technologies impact them.