This paper presents detail about internet shutdowns, platform shadowbanning, and countermovement doxxing as endured by feminist activists in India. Taken together, these practices and tools represent a digital Hindutva governance that comprises and co-constitutes the power of the state, corporations, and pro-government actors. This governance works through diffused mechanisms that further construct a new digital governmentality, as activists limit their own activity in response to perceived threats. The findings builds on feminist scholarship detailing digital space as gendered; and challenges reductive, state-centric narratives about digital capitalism and colonialism. Findings are based on digital ethnographic fieldwork with feminist activists in Hindi- and English-speaking northern India between 2019 and 2023, and demonstrate the value of thinking with those who must navigate, endure and resist digital power.
Crawford, Claire (Fri,) studied this question.