Research

This is the first issue paper under the Feminist Digital Justice Project, co-written by Anita Gurumurthy, Nandini Chami and Cecilia Alemany. It outlines a strategic road map that focuses on new legal­ institutional frameworks and data governance models to counter data extractivism and women’s exploitation. It envisions alternative data­-based…

This is the second issue paper, co-written by Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami, for Feminist Digital Justice -- a collaborative research and advocacy initiative of IT for Change and DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era).

In trade policy corridors, an e­-commerce agenda for women’s empowerment has been rapidly gaining…

This is the first issue paper, co-written by Anita Gurumurthy, Nandini Chami and Cecilia Alemany, for Feminist Digital Justice -- a collaborative research and advocacy initiative of IT for Change and DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era).

Digital platform companies have emerged as neo­-feudal overlords profiting from a…

The United States’ blacklisting of the Chinese company Huawei — since reversed — represents an important milestone as the world splits digitally around its two digital superpowers, the US and China. Last year, the US disallowed Alibaba’s takeover of Moneygram and later embargoed US supplies to the mobile company ZTE. Amazon and Google recently…

Technologies that map women’s bodies and reproductive choices are a site of patriarchal control and surveillance while simultaneously creating an illusion of choice or autonomy for users. This report recognizes and examines the ways in which the absence of safeguards for sensitive and personal data and information disproportionately targets…

The platform model has emerged as a game changing force, transforming economic activity across key sectors. Platformization as the process of such a shift towards new modes of production and exchange serves as the pièce de résistance of global economic organization in the…

This article was first published in Firstpost.

A mass exodus from Twitter over to open-source microblogging community Mastodon is in the news, and it’s not the first time that users have responded to social media’s opaque content moderation policies in this way. Calls to #deletefacebook abounded after the Cambridge Analytica scandal…

Most people still see data as ordinary knowledge or information best subject to 'open access' regimes. This is also the moral basis for the advocacy of free global flows of data. It is an argument that many, if not most, civil society activists worldwide often fall prey to.

This research paper attempts to develop a theoretical basis for…

Digital and data technologies are not merely tools or enablers of development; they are the scaffolds of a new social paradigm. As data flows through a more and more interconnected planet, the capture of network-data spaces by corporate and state interest recasts opportunity structures, heightening inequalities between, and within, countries.…

Progress towards every single sustainable development goal (SDG) of Agenda 2030 also hinges on the effective deployment of digital technologies. In Global Governance Spotlight 4|2019, Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami from IT for Change explain the importance of so-called digital ecosystems to catalyse inclusive sustainable development. In…