How to Build a Feminist Internet and Why It Matters

Abstract

Despite being run by algorithms and data, the technology we use every day, often discriminates on the basis of race, gender, and even age. It is increasingly difficult to tell the extent to which the internet intersects with and amplifies male-centred technological innovations (AKA Big Tech), heteronormativity, and intervenes in the functioning of democracy.<br/>As technology's reach extends further into our everyday lives, we ask, what would a feminist internet look like?<br/> Feminist by Design offers methodological frameworks for feminist internet research, creating a diverse platform for engagements, with reflections mainly from the Global South. These essays and analyses are steppingstones to a feminist internet—one that 'works towards empowering more women and people of diverse and marginalised sexualities and genders—in all our diversities—to fully enjoy our rights, engage in pleasure and play, and dismantle patriarchy.'<br/> In this issue and more broadly in the field of feminist internet research, there is growing interest and trust in the rigour of feminist methodological inquiry and ways of knowing to challenge a false narrative of the 'objectivity' of knowledge, especially in relation to science and technology. Placing the voices of those who were formerly margin- alised front and centre of internet research practices, this issue promises transforming and transformative accounts of the world.