SOAS Research Online

Abstract

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 16th 2012 making it one of the biggest gender movements that the country has witnessed. The focus of this research is to investigate the use ICTs and social media by civil society actors, activists and organisations specifically for gender activism in India. The cyberconflict framework forms the foundation of this paper. The cyberconflict framework developed by Karatzogianni (2006) uses elements of the social movement theory (Mc-Adam, McCarthy & Zald, 1996), including the mobilizing structures, political opportunity and framing process, and combines it with media theory and conflict theory in order to understand the use of ICTs and social media in conflicts occurring in the cyberspace. In order to develop a critical analysis, a case study approach was adopted for this paper. The data was collected by conducting qualitative interviews along with analysing news reports published online, videos, articles on blogs and posts on social media sources such as Facebook and Twitter. Further thematic analysis was used to understand the nature and impact of use of ICTs and social media for gender activism in India.