Feminist Internet Research Network: Call for Research Proposals

By APC

The Association for Progressive Communications Women’s Rights Programme (APC WRP) invites you/your organisation to submit a research proposal as part of the growing network of researchers, scholars and activists who are part of the Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN). This cycle of the FIRN project will undertake data-driven research on critical and emerging issues related to internet policy discussions and decision making, specifically in Africa and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, with a thematic focus on gender-based violence.

Background

APC WRP has been working towards the imagining and making of a feminist internet by building and strengthening networks of researchers, activists, academics, thinkers, coders, artists and others, with the understanding that the making of a feminist internet is critical to bring about transformation in gendered structures of power that exist online and on-ground. The objective of the FIRN network continues to be ensuring that the needs of women and gender-diverse and queer people are considered in internet policy discussions and decision making. During the first cycle of the project, we set up the FIRN network with eight partners from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and Eastern Europe, where members undertook data-driven research that provided substantial evidence to drive change in policy and law and in discourse around internet rights in the global South context. Please visit our website here. The network has also become a space where for exchange of learning and capacity building among the network members and practitioners in the field more broadly, including affected communities and activists, researchers, academics and tech developers, especially those who engage with issues on digital technology and human rights.

In this call, the aim is to respond to several gaps in the field of internet research from a feminist perspective in the African and MENA regions. In the feminist research we have conducted recently, which is the extension of the mapping study undertaken in 2017, we have identified gaps that include the lack of global South perspectives as well as integration of feminist scholarship in ICT-related research; the need to engage in context-specific analysis that takes into account intersectionality as well as power dynamics and structures; and the need to engage key actors from women’s rights, sexual rights and feminist advocates and activists in policy advocacy and reform. In line with feminist knowledge building, this call opens up another opportunity to learn about and build innovative feminist methodologies around the ecosystem and landscape of digitally networked technologies that impact on and intersect with different dimensions of human life – including ethics, reflexivity, position, methodology, processes and outcomes of research, and the politics of knowledge.

Research questions

The feminist approach certainly overlaps with gender-based analysis. The significant difference between them is that feminism is invested in the politics of change and transformation of structures around gender in particular. Hence, the purpose of this call is to comprehensively address existing power dynamics and structural inequalities, interconnecting internet rights and women’s rights, addressing intersectional perspectives from the global South by incorporating a feminist scholarship. From this objective of realising and making a feminist internet, the overarching research questions for this proposal are:

1. What forms of discrimination and exclusion do women and gender-diverse and LGBTIQ people encounter because of social, economic and political changes driven by the internet, and what are the ways in which this is addressed or challenged by infrastructure we build, and the movements, spaces and networks that we occupy?
2. What are the challenges and opportunities in policy and infrastructure with regard to the making of a feminist internet? And what are the learnings and insights from feminist and queer movements and spaces that could critically address geopolitical contexts and transnational dynamics towards making the policy and infrastructure needed for a feminist internet?

The two broad research questions will be explored in relation to online gender-based violence (GBV) – a prioritised thematic areas for feminist research in this call.

Feminist activists and advocates have been arguing that online GBV, as forms of technology-related violence, mirror the extent to which gender-based violence takes place within social hierarchies governed by gender, race, caste, etc. In this research grant, the FIRN network considers rethinking of online GBV from the African and MENA regional perspective. The following few objectives are indicative of this intention:

• To better understand gender-based violence online.
• To establish survivor-centred research and responses that take into account the descriptions of violence, harm and trauma that don’t necessarily fit within existing legal categories or even popular or feminist discourse.
• To explore the role of the private sector and social media companies as an important component of the de/escalation of violence in online platforms.
• To propose a feminist policy advocacy framework with a particular focus on institutional, behavioural, societal and individual responses against online GBV with recommendations for safe and violence-free used of digital platforms.

Call for submissions process

The call for submission of research proposals is an open call to individuals and/or organisations with experience or prioritised interest in engaging with feminist research in the field. Priority will be given to researchers and/or organisations based in Africa and the MENA region. For the purposes of transparency and accountability, the criteria for the selection of individuals/organisations invited to submit proposals are:

• Established experience in feminist and/or internet rights research in the field that integrates gender with an emerging interest/commitment to feminist research.
• Regional or thematic priority, work with communities where research or knowledge on the area of gender, feminism and the internet are currently lacking.

The research period is from April 2022 to April 2023, including data collection, analysis, writing, participation in events, and implementation of communications and advocacy strategies. The research budget is USD 25,000 per project, which includes all costs related to the research for its entire duration.

Eligibility

We will accept applications from individuals and organisations. You can also apply as a research team. All applications should identify a lead researcher and host institution. Any type of legal entity, including universities, research centres and civil society organisations, can host the lead researcher. The lead researcher does not necessarily need to be working at the host institution at the time when the proposal is submitted. However, a mutual agreement and the host institution’s commitment on how the relationship will be established are necessary to be included as part of the brief.

Representatives from the research teams are expected to participate in one research-related workshop that will be organised by FIRN. Partners who will receive the funding will be notified more about the event. The deadline for applications is 24 February 2022. For any questions about the application process, please email [email protected] (with the subject line “Query on FIRN research brief 2022”).

Applications should include

* Please use the online application template to include all information needed.

1. Concept note for the proposed research (not more than five pages), including:

• Thematic area
• Brief context/rationale
• Main research question/objective and proposed methodology. Please indicate the feminist theoretical framework and methodology that are proposed in the implementation of the research project, including data collection and analysis.
• Community of engagement. Please locate your/your organisation’s positionality in relation to the prioritised community.
• Ethical considerations
• Proposed research outputs and ways of engagement with findings (please also include priority stakeholders)
• Research team members
• Proposed budget.

2.Curriculum vitae of lead researcher and research team members with relevant experience and skills, including previous research projects and related networks they are affiliated or connected with.

3. Letter of interest (profiling area of work that has been done with civil society as policy advocate, researcher, activist, etc. by the organisation/individual)

4. Most recent/most relevant research undertaken in relation to gender and technology. Please include a URL linking to the study or an attachment if it has not been published online.

NOTE: Please note that applications will only be accepted through the online portal, which can be accessed here.

Selection process and criteria

The FIRN network aims to support the implementation of up to four research projects to be completed within one year. Selection will be made in consultation with a group of peer network advisors made up of four individuals who have different experience, knowledge and expertise in the field, based on the following criteria:

• Relevance to the thematic priority and project aims, in particular, to meet knowledge gaps.
• Integration of feminist research methodology and theory. We welcome innovative approaches in this respect, particularly on feminist digital research methodology and theory.
• Integration of a feminist and intersectional approach.
• Potential impact on and contribution to the realisation of a feminist internet and policy advocacy from the specific area of the research.
• Feasibility.
• Regional, thematic and methodological balance.

About APC WRP

The Association for Progressive Communications Women’s Rights Programme (APC WRP) collectively works with actors who are primarily feminist activists or organisations working in different capacities on digital rights, sexual rights and/or women’s rights. Some of our ongoing initiatives are the Feminist Principles of the Internet (FPIs), Take Back The Tech! (TBTT), Exploratory Research on Sexuality and the Internet (EROTICS), Feminist Tech eXchange (FTX) and GenderIT.org. These diverse but intersecting feminist initiatives collectively create a kind of a “home” for a shared political language and framework of analysis to engage and unpack emerging issues in an increasingly digitally interconnected landscape for transformative justice.

APC intervenes on a broad range of rights, from civil and political rights to economic, social and cultural rights, as they relate to information and communications technologies (ICTs). APC WRP integrates a feminist analysis and women’s and sexual rights perspective to this work. We address these issues from a global South viewpoint through a range of interrelated core strategies: knowledge building and research, capacity building, policy advocacy and movement building.

We work with individuals, organisations and networks engaged in women’s rights, sexual rights and internet rights issues, to bridge the gap between the work of different movements, and to centre the perspectives and priorities of feminist and women’s movements. Importantly, we prioritise collaborative work that is led by actors in the global “South”. We believe that contextualised and impactful feminist work produces knowledge that is grounded in and amplifies the lived experiences of diverse women and trans, gender non-conforming and queer persons. This in itself is an important rupturing of power dynamics in the field of digital rights, as well as in movement organising as a whole. The FIRN project forms a critical component of our current knowledge-building strategy.

Thank you!

We thank you hugely for your consideration, and should you accept the invitation, for your labour involved in the submission process. We greatly value your work, and hope that some level of engagement with the FIRN project will be possible regardless of the outcome.

—

Previously Published on apc with Creative Commons Licenses

You Might Also Like These From The Good Men Project

Compliments Men Want to Hear More Often

Relationships Aren’t Easy, But They’re Worth It

The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex

..A Man’s Kiss Tells You Everything

—

Photo credit: iStock