Feminist Theory 

Research article on Controlled empowerment of women: intersections of feminism, HCI and political communication in India authored by Prof. Nimmi Rangaswamy and Isha Mangurkar, a PhD Student in the School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, UK and a former student of Nimmi Rangaswamy is published in the journa -l Feminist Theory.

The paper is an analysis of the dominant role played by Twitter during the 2014 general elections in India, ushering a right-wing party into power where political leaders employed the platform to augment their public image and push right-wing campaign agendas to millions of followers. A prominent and strategic use of Twitter was credited to reign in a narrative of women’s empowerment debates lying at the intersections of feminist theory, political communication and human-computer interaction. Utilising the qualitative methods of Thematic Analysis and Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis, the study highlights two feminist campaigns In India : instant triple talaq, and the Sabarimala verdict. Tweets were analysed in relation to the debates around the two campaigns highlighting the rhetorical inconsistency of right-wing leaders and supporters. The study further discuss the implications of this inconsistency for the simultaneous suppression of voices demanding empowerment and amplification of those justifying religious tradition and concludes by introducing the idea of the ‘controlled empowerment’ of women to advance the understanding of the double edged right wing discourse on women’s  empowerment.

Full paper: https://doi.org/10.1177/14647001221082296