Disinformation – a feminist issue

—

by

Numun Fund
in

By Subha Wijesiriwardena

While disinformation has become a much-talked about issue in social movements, as well as philanthropic and policymaking spaces, there’s not much consensus on how we understand it or its impact, nor about which tactics make for the best solutions. Similarly, while there is some recent attention paid to the concept of “gendered disinformation”, there is not a lot of critical engagement within feminist movements with the broader system of disinformation as a feminist issue. 

This lack of consensus and collaboration on such an urgent issue is, at least in part, the result of the fact that much of the well-organized, well-resourced efforts to combat disinformation are often led by those in the global North.

For example, a meta-study of mis/disinformation interventions studies published in early 2024 by German scholars1, shows that over 70% of the scenarios and cases studied were specific to the United States2. Questions can be raised about whether studies focused so wholly on one country or context could actually yield solutions which were applicable in other contexts. 

The most dominant players in this mainstream “countering disinformation” field are at times the very corporations and individuals who create, own, govern and manage the technologies which are deeply implicated in the global disinformation problem. Solutions stemming from these actors are typically grounded in guarding their own interests, and look to a body of knowledge skewed to the global North. These processes often exclude expertise and evidence gathered from other parts of the world, and produce proposals which are typically overly-reliant on technical and technological advancements: “tech solutionism”3. 

In addition, these efforts often treat the concerns and experiences of communities impacted by gender and sexuality-based disinformation merely as “collateral”, rather than identifying gender and sexuality politics as core to anti-democracy agendas. 

This remains a dangerous oversight, especially as “feminism” itself is deeply contested and weaponized in global, anti-democracy disinformation campaigns. Studies have shown that disinformation about feminisms and feminist agendas are carefully constructed to have the most impact, and are pervasive today in many media contexts. For example, scholars studying Spanish language disinformation strategies across Latin America found that “disinformation on the feminist agenda is mainly aimed at questioning the right of women over their own bodies, as well as polarizing the exercise of this right.”4

Meanwhile, disinformation tactics, wielded by anti-gender and anti-democracy actors in their campaigns to destabilize democratic projects and capture mainstream political power, are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Women, sexual and gender-diverse persons, feminist activists, human rights defenders, women politicians, environmental defenders, indigenous peoples, racialized peoples and immigrant communities, to name just some, are commonly the subjects of anti-gender and anti-democracy disinformation campaigns. 


A growing body of global majority feminist scholarship and activism around digital rights and gendered disinformation helps both expand and deepen the frame set by the global North. 

For example, feminist and queer scholars from the global majority such as Nishant Shah make clear in their work that present-day disinformation tactics must be seen in the context of state propaganda, state control of information flow, and the spread of government mandated “internet shut-downs”5. Internet shut-downs – often justified by governments as a measure to stop the spread of harmful disinformation – are not a useful tool when dealing with disinformation, as Shah shows, but rather create conditions in which disinformation can thrive6.

Shah notes that due to these nuances, it becomes important to distinguish between misinformation, “which is information that has just not been verified yet,”7 and disinformation. “Disinformation”, Shah writes, “is an act of secrecy and manipulation, where the provenance, authority, and authorship of the information is not under question. It is not the introduction of fake information in a data stream; it is the introduction of fake information as reliable and truthful, supported by institutional logics of verification, and thus spread with legitimacy that is difficult to discredit.”8

Feminist organizations such as the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), tries to define disinformation by tracking both movement-based concepts and emerging responses from international human rights experts and UN bodies9. APC cites the Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression report in 2023, dedicated to “gendered disinformation”10, where the SRFoE writes, “disinformation could be understood as false information that is deliberately created to harm”11, emphasizing intention in her definition. 

APC describes the issue of disinformation as a structured, systemic issue, in particular that “disinformation is organized, well resourced, and reinforced by amplification techniques, including automated technology.”12 APC describes disinformation as a “multifaceted”13 problem, where “A holistic approach to understanding disinformation requires an analysis of our broader information ecosystems”.14

But feminist critique of fascist narrative practices and propaganda tactics long predates the internet age. For example, Nivedita Menon, Indian feminist scholar, describes what she calls “Brahminical patriarchy” as the foundation of Hindutva fascism that is spreading rapidly in influence across India15. She says that Hindutva fascism justifies itself upon narratives that Muslims are inherently incapable of being democratic and being “constitutional”16.

Algerian feminist writing for Women Living Under Muslim Laws under the pseudonym “Mahl” noted in 2001 the parallels between Nazi campaigns and those of fascist political actors operating in her own context17. She notes how fascists exploit legitimate dispossession to entrench fascism, writing, “Fascism manipulates and subverts it [dispossession] and finally points at a scapegoat fragment of the population as THE cause of social disarray.”18 

These narrative tactics bear strong resemblances to those seen in present-day anti-gender and anti-democracy disinformation campaigns. These campaigns – like the examples above – seek to scapegoat targeted groups or persons for deeply-rooted, systemic issues in society, instead of offering meaningful solutions to those problems, , and do so by demonizing and denigrating the targeted groups.

As Mahl writes, “the scapegoat ‘foreigner’”… “is held responsible for social disarray”19; and so targeted groups are at times made into literal “foreigners” (e.g. migrant communities, refugees etc.), and at other times, figurative “foreigners” (e.g. sexual and gender-diverse persons) who seem to defy the bounds of what is considered socially acceptable.

But to what end? Latin American feminist journalist Florencia Goldsman notes what she thinks is the function of anti-gender and anti-democracy disinformation campaigns: targeted communities, e.g. women in politics, are impugned and discredited in order to promote “strong man” archetypes, such as someone who “sweeps in as a saviour in times of crisis”20.

Disinformation creates narratives of chaos in order to establish fascist and tyrannical rule as the “antidote”.

So how should feminist movements respond?

For one thing, we Feminist movements need not look too far. Feminist movements work on numerous issues over decades yields good insights and lessons. Take, for example, feminist movements’ work on gender-based violence – and online gender-based violence.

Take Back the Tech!, a campaign to end online gender-based violence started in 2006 by APC, was built on the premise that little attention was being paid at the time to the connections between information and communication technologies and violence against women21. Over the years, APC and its wide range of network members built a landscape of advocacy and technology-based interventions, building a body of evidence from across different regions and bringing more attention to the issue. Importantly, using as a central philosophy that women and girls should be in ownership of technology in order to truly combat violence.

Sara Baker wrote, at the 10th anniversary of Take Back the Tech!, “Campaigners have successfully encouraged governments to pay more attention to technology-related violence against women, trained law enforcement and other professionals on how to support victims/survivors and, perhaps most important, taught women and girls skills like digital storytelling and secure mobile phone use.”22

Tech-feminist scholar Maya Indira Ganesh helpfully reflects on an exercise on combating online gender-based violence through a “design-thinking”23 approach – a methodology which can be described as “an array of techniques that broadly involves participatory methods for taking apart and understanding problems”24. 

She writes, about some of the tangible threads coming out of the workshop, that, “Uncovering the materiality of the internet throws into question where particular regulatory frameworks or social contracts of the internet come from. If the internet is not a free speech soapbox but is a complex assembly of material, political, economic, symbolic and imaginary interests and power, then how does a specific idea of free speech become its reigning social contract?”25

These examples illustrate two things: One, that feminist movements are quite familiar with the exercise of analyzing and unearthing the material, systemic and structural causes of violence; second, that feminist movements have a history of approaching social issues through innovative and participatory methodologies, driven by contextual understanding, and advanced by collaboration, experimentation and iteration. 

There are few movements better positioned to offer system-wide responses and dynamic, collaborative solutions to combating disinformation, than feminist movements immersed in gender justice work. This is due to the reality that gender and sexuality intersect in profound ways with every other power structure, such as race, class, caste, ability etc. to produce equality and inequality, and to fundamentally shape how we all experience human rights, democracy, safety and peace. This makes every issue of concern to us as a society, a feminist issue.

Feminist movements in the global majority, in all their diversity, need to come together urgently, to work together on this issue. The impact of disinformation can be seen in almost every facet of contemporary life. And for those who have already begun the work – these folks merely need to be supported and resourced in their endeavours, as they look across movements, regions and sectors to bring communities together to design and pilot truly multi-pronged, strategic solutions to disinformation.

Footnotes

  1. Ziemer, C. T. & Rothmund, T. (2024). Psychological Underpinnings of Misinformation Countermeasures. Journal of Media Psychology. https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/epdf/10.1027/1864-1105/a000407
  2. Ziemer, C. [@CarolinZiemer] (2024. January 23). 2) More than 70 % of misinfo intervention studies are conducted with… [Tweet] https://x.com/CarolinZiemer/status/1749841795679240279
  3. Byrum, G. & Benjamin, R. (2022, 16 June). Disrupting the Gospel of Tech Solutionism to Build Tech Justice. Stanford Social Innovation Review. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/disrupting_the_gospel_of_tech_solutionism_to_build_tech_justice
  4. Malquín-Robles, A. & Gamir-Ríos, J. (2023). Disinformation and digital sexism: Feminism and its agenda as an object of hoaxes in Spanish. ICONO 14, Revista de comunicación y tecnologías emergentes, 21(1).
  5. Shah, N. (2021). (Dis)information Blackouts: Politics and Practices of Internet Shutdowns. International Journal of Communication 15(2021), 2693–2709. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/13977/3466
  6. Ibid.
  7. Ibid.
  8. Ibid.
  9. Association for Progressive Communications. (Published: 2021, Updated: 2024). APC policy explainer: Disinformation. https://www.apc.org/en/pubs/apc-policy-explainer-disinformation
  10. United Nations, General Assembly. (2023, 7 Aug). Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Irene Khan, A/78/288. Available at undocs.org/en/A/78/288
  11. Ibid.
  12. Association for Progressive Communications. (Published: 2021, Updated: 2024). Op. cit. 
  13. Ibid.
  14. Ibid.
  15. Menon, N. (2017). Prof. Nivedita Menon on Brahmanical Patriarchy : The Foundation of Hindutva Fascism. [Video] (YouTube). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze2utQLlHuI
  16. Ibid.
  17. Mahl. (2000). Algeria: Ordinary Fascism, Fundamentalism and Femicide. In H. Kapur (Ed.) Dossier 23/24. Women Living Under Muslim Laws. https://www.wluml.org/wp-content/uploads/2003/07/D23-24.pdf
  18. Ibid.
  19. Ibid.
  20. Goldsman, Florencia. (2021, 23 September). A MINE-RIDDEN INTERNET AND SIX RULES FOR UNDERSTANDING ANTI-RIGHTS NARRATIVES. GenderIt. https://genderit.org/feminist-talk/mine-ridden-internet-and-six-rules-understanding-anti-rights-narratives
  21.  https://www.takebackthetech.net/frequently-asked-questions
  22. Baker, S. (2016). [EDITORIAL] TAKING BACK THE TECH FOR 10 YEARS!. GenderIt. https://genderit.org/node/4855/
  23. Ganesh, M. (2017). THE ARCHITECTURES OF ONLINE HARASSMENT (PART 1). GenderIt. https://genderit.org/feminist-talk/architectures-online-harassment-part-1
  24. Ganesh, M. (2017). Unscripting Harassment (Part 2). GenderIt. https://genderit.org/feminist-talk/unscripting-harassment-part-2
  25. Ibid.

Subha Wijesiriwardena is a feminist activist, researcher and communicator from Colombo. She is co-founder and co-director of Just Futures Collaborative, (https://justfuturescollaborative.org/), an independent feminist initiative which aims to build global cross-movement strategies for challenging criminalization, promoting human rights, and protecting democracy. Subha lives in New York City.