'Silence No More' : an In-Depth Cyberconflict Analysis of the Nirbhaya Rape Case and Digital Tender Activism in India

• Main Author: Dey, Adrija
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-2016
• Subjects: Activism; Digital technology; Gender; Social networks

Sociopolitical activism has been crucial in shaping the structure of the contemporary Indian society. Over the last few decades, while information and communication technologies (ICTs) and social media have been increasingly popular and a widely used tool for activism around the world, it is only in the recent past that people have started using these technologies as an alternative platform for activism in India. One of the most extensive use of digital technologies was witnessed in the nationwide protests in India post the Delhi Nirbhaya rape case on December 16, 2012 making it one of the biggest gender movements that the country has witnessed. The focus of this research is to investigate the use of ICTs and social media by civil society actors, activists and organisations specifically for gender activism in India. The cyberconflict framework (Karatzogianni 2006; 2015) forms the foundation of this research. However, this framework was not built with a gender focus and to explore the use of digital technologies specifically for gender activism, it was crucial to advance the theoretical foundation of the cyberconflict framework for it to create a broader understanding of the relation between social movements, gender and ICTs. For the purpose of this study, the protests after the Nirbhaya rape case on December 16, 2012 have been considered as a primary case study. Further data was collected from various online resources such as news reports published online, videos, articles on blogs, posts on social media sources such as Facebook and Twitter and by conducting semi-structured interviews with organisations and individual participants. Further thematic analysis was used to understand the nature and impact of use of ICTs and social media for gender activism in India.