Indian women activists are increasingly integrating digital strategies in their fight against the burning issue of sexual violence. Their digital strategies help them navigate the Indian socio-digital landscape, which is an extension of the sociocultural context they live in. There are limited studies in the area of digital feminist activism emerging from the Global South, especially from the context of post-colonial India. There is a concerning gap in the literature on this topic when it comes to understanding the factors that shape women's digital activism against sexual violence. Therefore while addressing this gap, this paper investigates digital activism by Indian women against sexual violence under the overarching question of; what are the rhetorical practices of digital feminist protest by Indian women activists against sexual violence? Anchored in the framework of postcolonial feminism, I examine the journey of the local Indian women to digital activism; to understand their motivation and access to digital technology. My interviews with 20 Indian women activists from diverse backgrounds within the Indian landscape reveal the factors that shape their journey to digital activism. This paper contributes to understanding the role class, status, and geographical location play in women's journey to digital activism against sexual violence, within a post-colonial Global South country as India.

With each technological advancement comes opportunities for misuse that can impact individuals’ well-being. This is particularly true for marginalized individuals and groups, as certain technologies are exploited to inflict harm on vulnerable people, extending beyond the digital realm.

Drawing upon semi-structured interviews with 16 participants, this paper considers the misuse of Apple's AirDrop to publicly sexually harass young Jewish and Palestinian girls through wireless technology: notably, through the unsolicited sending of sexually explicit images and text. We conceptualize this misuse of AirDrop as a form of tech-facilitated sexual violence ([TFSV]; Henry & Powell, 2017).

AirDrop's misuse led to the victims' feelings of fear and rage, occasionally leading to re-traumatization. Many felt watched and followed, and generally unsafe, in public spaces. All participants, however, demonstrated resistance: notably, by forming digital 'safe spaces' or changing their AirDrop names to gender neutral, or men's ones, to deter would-be online predators. Despite these demonstrations of agency, however, many women began to avoid public spaces.

In our paper, we consider how Apple's tech can be re-conceptualized as "trauma informed" (Little, 2023) -- or as seeking to avoid traumatization in the first place. We seek to responsibilize tech companies, rather than victim-blaming victims or asking that they shoulder the burden of avoiding this form of wireless TFSV.

Recently, while there has been some attention to the issues online harassment in higher education, the impacts of online sexual harassment have been lost within the broader focus. There is negligible research looking at these specific experiences within Indian universities. To address this gap, this paper explores three different but interconnected forms of online sexual harassment - image-based sexual abuse, online chat rooms, and trolling in the context of Indian universities. Following the works of Liz Kelly (1987) and Clare McGlynn, Erika Rackley, and Ruth Houghton (2017), this paper establishes the importance of understanding online sexual harassment as a continuum of other forms of offline sexual violence having physical, mental, and financial impacts on survivors, deeply affecting their sense of safety. In doing so, this paper attempts to develop a materialist understanding of online sexual harassment in Indian universities in turn demonstrating the confluence of India’s patriarchal and casteist society and an authoritarian state who use technology as a powerful disciplining tool to push women and queer people out of digital public spaces. This research attempts to establish that this disciplining and silencing of women and queer people are essential for the spread of both techno-capitalism and Brahmanical Hindutva nationalism.

This work explores the intersection of toxicity and symbolic violence as fundamental concepts for understanding two critical dimensions of online violence: its propagation and legitimation. Drawing from Critical Discourse Analysis, we emphasize language's role in negotiating power relationships, demonstrating its significance in shaping social practices and power dynamics. Building on our previous work on gender toxicity, we investigate how toxicity becomes a form of legitimizing violent discourses.Further, we present a framework categorizing violence legitimation into "discursive structure" and "spreadable structure." Discursive structures encompass implicit and explicit violence, including humor, stereotyping, and name-calling, revealing strategies employed in violent discourse. Spreadable structures, including polarization and toxicity, explore how discourse spreads on platforms, affecting visibility and influencing dominant perspectives. The understanding of these categories requires consideration of social and infrastructural power dynamics within the online context.