Shutdown, shadowbanned, doxxed: Hindutva governance and digital governmentalities

Abstract

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.