Authors: Bárbara Paes and Ester Borges, Instituto Minas Programam. Originally published at GenderIT.org.

As part of the third iteration of the Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), Instituto Minas Programam has been carrying out research about the impacts of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) on the experiences of Black Brazilian women and their stories of resistance, connection and possibility.

In this article, we share a few reflections from our research process, including considerations about our methodology and our positionality as researchers, the ways research participants challenged and invited us to strengthen our research approach, as well as an overview of the (imperfect) measures we implemented to navigate power dynamics embedded within the research process and to recognise research participants as the key contributors to this work.

“A starting point for more”: The “why” behind feminist research

We are in the final moments of an online gathering with women who have been interviewed for our research project. We – researchers at Instituto Minas Programam – are investigating the impacts of TFGBV on the experiences of Black Brazilian women and documenting stories of resistance, connection and possibility. In the months leading up to this online gathering, we conducted 12 in-depth interviews with women who had all experienced TFGBV. They are writers, politicians, technologists, students, organisers and journalists who responded to our invitation to join this research project.[1] A portion of them are joining the conversation this morning.

Some of the women in the call have known each other for years. “I haven’t seen you in forever, amiga, you look beautiful!” Paths crossed in organising meetings, online groups, university hallways, street protests, social media groups, feminist gatherings, bars and book launches. Others hadn’t met each other before but started to as the morning went on. “So sorry about the interruptions! Kids are on vacation from school, you know how it gets,” says one as a smiling toddler makes an appearance in her video. “Don’t worry,” responds another, “I’ve got my teenage kid right here, I know how summer vacations can be.”

In the temporary (but sticky!) roles of “researchers” or “research participants”, we’re spending the hour together talking about preliminary findings. We, the researchers, organised these group gatherings to have a space for us to be open about how we were building this work, to invite participants to join us in our process of sense-making and to welcome them to complexify our findings (more about that below).

In doing our best to embed feminist research principles during this project, we were constantly reminding ourselves that the aim of feminist research is liberation, and were often invited by participants to “re-position the finish line” of this project.

As the conversation about research findings wraps up, we ask everyone if they have any reflections or questions about the process more broadly. “I want to know: What happens after you publish this research?” responds a participant. “I think it should be a springboard for other things. It should be a starting point for more. More gatherings, more serious public debate about [TFGBV against Black Brazilian women]. More things.” Others agree.

As researchers within an institution (even if it is a feminist organisation!), working under deadlines and a budget, it can be easy to fall in line with the idea that the “finish line” is the publication date. In doing our best to embed feminist research principles during this project, we were constantly reminding ourselves that the aim of feminist research is liberation,[2] and were often invited by participants to “re-position the finish line” of this project. Throughout the research process, we did not want to lose sight of how our research carries the purpose of knowledge production and an ethical commitment to social justice and transformation, both of which impact our methodology and what we consider to be the “conclusion” of this project.

In a question like “What happens after you publish?” lies an invitation to keep ourselves focused on the fact that our ultimate goal should be making the research meaningful and useful to its participants. Statements like “This should be a starting point for more” reflect both a summoning and an expression of participants’ radical vision of where research should be taking us. These interventions from research participants are inhabited by the hope that the knowledge we’re curating in this project won’t be just another PDF file somewhere, but that it will eventually, somehow, serve as a small tool within a much larger struggle that some of these individuals are engaged with as part of liberation movements led by Black Brazilian women.

Our experience working on this project has been marked by the perception – sometimes expressed directly by research participants, as seen in the story above – that research needs to be “more”: it must serve as a springboard for further action and discussion, it must be seen a starting point at best, not a finish line. When researching TFGBV’s impact on Black Brazilian women, we were challenged by research participants to commit to transformation and to conduct this research so that the methodology as well as the findings are meaningful for the participants.

“From a place”: Researching Black Brazilian women’s experiences with TFGBV and our attempts at rejecting false notions of objectivity

Back when this research project was barely an idea, we met with researcher Thiane Neves for a conversation about her work. She told us how some had dismissed her research describing it as “nothing more than writing about [her] friends online.”[3] This comment – a narrow-minded attempt at disqualifying Neves’ work – is illustrative of how feminist knowledge production can be trivialised, and in particular, how the contributions of Black Brazilian women intellectuals writing about the experiences of Black women can be discredited, belittled and dismissed as not “objective” enough. At the time, Neves shared with us a reflection on her research practice: “Writing, talking about Black women in Amazônia is also talking about me. I could be another researcher stealing knowledge, but no. I’m researching us. I’m also a Black woman from Amazônia, I’m also a cyberactivist. So I’m researching from this place, too.”

As we kick off the research, we do so with the understanding that we too are researching “from a place”: our positionality as Black Brazilian women means our backgrounds and lived experiences are inevitable influences in this research.

Fast forward to almost two years later and we’re starting this project, focusing on Black Brazilian women’s experiences with TFGBV and their responses to this violence. The reflections Neves shared with us linger in our minds. As we kick off the research, we do so with the understanding that we too are researching “from a place”: our positionality as Black Brazilian women means our backgrounds and lived experiences are inevitable influences in this research. On one hand, this means recognising that objectivity is not possible, that all knowledge is situated and constructed from specific social perspectives,[4] and that when writing about Black Brazilian women, it has been important to us not to research and write as if we– the researchers – are disconnected from “the subject matter”. In refusing the positivist paradigm, which seeks supposed neutrality, we have tried to acknowledge that we are inherently connected to this research.

For us, “researching from a place” meant that instead of striving for detachment, we recognised that our experiences as Black Brazilian women were part of the research design and analytical process. This approach resonates with feminist methodological discussions on subjective experience and insider-outsider positionality, which emphasise that research is never neutral. Positionality is fluid and shaped by our cultural identity, professional background, and lived experiences. Rather than seeking detachment, we recognise that our standpoint informs both our research questions and our interpretation of the findings, making reflexivity a crucial part of our process.[5]

On the other hand, we have to be real about how “the place” from where the two of us are researching is not every place: Black Brazilian women are an enormous, diverse group and working on this project we insist on not making universalising claims about Black Brazilian women’s experiences with online misogynoir and TFGBV.[6] In our interviews and group gatherings with participants, we talked about how complex our/their experiences are and grappled with our differentiated relationships with technology – influenced by factors such as class, age, geographical region, history of online engagement and more. In these conversations, we were invited to look at the various ways in which online misogynoir and TFGBV impact Black Brazilian women’s lives and the multitude of choices and strategies made in how to deal with these impacts. Although online misogynoir and TFGBV are part of a broader continuum of violence, in our research process we have tried to honour how individual experiences and responses can’t be narrowed into reductive, universalising narratives.

We have tried to relay the stories and insights generously shared with us without proposing a generalistic interpretation for the ways Black Brazilian women experience online misogynoir and TFGBV and the diverse, dynamic ways we/they build possibilities despite online misogynoir and TFGBV. We have tried to be cognisant of the fact that our experiences with TFGBV can and do share similarities (whether we’re thinking of root causes, how incidents play out, their impact, etc.) without ever being identical. In sum, we have been trying to research TFGBV against Black Brazilian women in ways that refuse homogenising narratives and affirm the complexity of our existence.

Trying to address power dynamics within the research process

Just as important as recognising our positionality is the acknowledgement of the power dynamics that may be embedded in being researchers in projects like this. Our positions as researchers can, for instance, distance us from those we are writing about. For one thing, the mere fact that we are able to be paid to write this research may confer certain credibility and/or attention to the issues we’re focusing on, even though some of the research participants are Black feminists who have been denouncing misogynoir and TFGBV for years (and many times, they went unheard). In working on this project, it has been important for us to not position ourselves as “the voice” behind the findings we gathered. Instead, we have tried to highlight the collective nature of our investigation and honour the women who contributed to this work as our intellectual peers, whose analysis of the structural issues that exist as a backdrop to TFGBV inform our interpretations, our approach and our writing.

Another way critical reflection about power dynamics within research influenced our research design lies in the (admittedly imperfect) measures we took related to care and safety.

One way we’ve tried to do this was by creating opportunities for participants to comment on and disagree with our findings. As mentioned earlier, after drafting our initial preliminary findings from individual interviews and desk research, we hosted two group gatherings with research participants, taking inspiration from the “sister circle” methodology. Created by Latoya Sherrica Johnson, sister circles are “group discussions or conversations among Black women arranged by a researcher to examine a specific set of topics and/or experiences,” to gain an “understanding of a specific issue, topic, or phenomena impacting Black women from the perspective of Black women themselves.”[7] We were drawn to this methodology for a number of reasons: the emphasis on group conversations not being focus groups hosted just to extract stories, but rather a method for facilitating supportive dialogue and knowledge exchange;[8] the recognition of “researcher as participant” of the group dialogue, someone who shares their own life experiences,[9] who is “obtaining knowledge” and also “contributing knowledge when appropriate”;[10] the possibility of researchers not being seen as the sole experts in the room, but rather having space for all, including participants, to be seen as “contributors to this research”;[11] and it being a methodology with “built-in space for emotions”, to have stories shared and have them “understood without doubt.”[12]

We wanted these group gatherings to be spaces where we share our early findings with research participants, hear their thoughts and, crucially, engage in a collective conversation about their/our experiences of TFGBV. As researchers, we can’t stress enough how meaningful this process was. More than just “getting feedback”, we found the group gatherings functioned as a space to search for resonance, to recognise the intellectual contribution these women bring to our research, and to honour our commitment to being transparent and accountable. It was important for us to hear if/how our findings resonated with research participants and these group conversations were essential to further complexify our analysis. Though power asymmetries between researcher and research participants may never be truly absent, in these sister-circles-inspired gatherings, the participants challenged our interpretations and, as we saw earlier in this text, prompted reflections about the aim of feminist research.

Another way critical reflection about power dynamics within research influenced our research design lies in the (admittedly imperfect) measures we took related to care and safety. Our position as researchers who are part of an institution – a small, independent, Black-led feminist organisation – means that, if needed, we can hire lawyers, digital security experts and mental health professionals. In other words, should this research project expose us to harm (whether it’s mental health challenges related to vicarious trauma or any form of public backlash by virtue of the content of the research), we can count on a certain layer of protection and institutional support. This is not necessarily true for all of our research participants, who, in telling their stories of TFGBV, shared how in many instances the movements or organisations they belonged to did not necessarily support them in navigating TFGBV. Precisely because online misogynoir and TFGBV are part of a continuum of violence that has historically harmed the health and well-being of Black women in Brazil, minimising potential harm and/or risks to research participants’ well-being has been imperative to our research process.

With this in mind, we have taken a few measures. One of them consisted of collectively deciding with participants against publishing their real names, a precaution to avoid further TFGBV. Participants explained that anonymity conferred on them the ability to speak more freely about the issues they were facing or had faced without risking potentially harmful personal exposure. Other measures we’ve applied include offering participants compensation for the interviews, providing stipends for mental health services after interviews, and letting participants know they can redact or “take back” anything they shared with us.

To us, this latter point is especially important because we recognise that, during qualitative research, the conversations we established with research participants are ones where factors like our shared identities and lived experiences (where they exist), potential previous connections with research participants, and our overall outwardly friendliness all contribute to “persuading interviewees to provide us with data for our research.”[13] In other words, though feminist research practices helped us shed away the pretence of objectivity and neutrality as researchers, we found that they can also create an environment where research participants share more than they would in other, more public spaces. Making space for them to redact or “take back” anything they share is our imperfect strategy to avoid reproducing extractive practices. In short, we honour the understanding that not everything we shared is for public consumption.

Making space for them to redact or “take back” anything they share is our imperfect strategy to avoid reproducing extractive practices. In short, we honour the understanding that not everything we shared is for public consumption.

Relatedly, we also explained – verbally and in writing – how participants’ data would be treated and made ourselves available for questions. Inspired by trauma-informed research practices, we tried to design our research in ways that deliberately avoided unnecessary exploration of trauma, which can be a complex balance. In the online survey through which we first contacted research participants, we informed them that they did not need to write about their experiences with TFGBV, they just needed to indicate interest in joining the project. Later, during semi-structured interviews and group gatherings, we made an effort not to “over-probe just because we could.”[14] We didn’t want to make those who had experienced misogynoir and TFGBV go through a traumatising process of needlessly delving into painful experiences out of personal curiosity. Because of this, we limited the number of questions focused specifically on the incidents and didn’t go into too much detail about the attacks; we avoided asking participants to repeat themselves unnecessarily; we did not include screenshots of attacks and posts or content details in our research report.

Ultimately, we recognise that while the measures above are important parts of our feminist approach to research, they are still imperfect. For example, while opting for anonymising research participants can mitigate further exposure to attacks, anonymity also puts us, the researchers, in a position where we are uncomfortably close to being seen as the individual proprietors of a knowledge that was collectively built. Similarly, though we believe that paying participants for their time is a step towards acknowledging their intellectual contribution, it doesn’t erase completely the power asymmetries that are inherent to research processes. We also recognise that though providing participants with stipends for mental health services after the interviews can be helpful to mitigate immediate triggers from the interviews, it doesn’t represent long-term support.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve participated [in research projects] and never heard another word about it.”

We’re back in another one of our research gatherings. A different group of research participants reunites for an evening of conversation. Mediated by an online video conferencing platform, we collectively explore the research findings and talk about the impacts of TFGBV in our lives.

Once more, as we approach the end of our meeting, we – the researchers – ask everyone if they have any reflections or questions about the research more broadly. After answering a few questions about the practical next steps (“When is this getting published?”, “Are we having a big launch party?”) and thanking everyone for joining another meeting with us, one of the women in the room shares: “I also have to thank you two [the researchers] for getting back to us [with the preliminary findings]. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve participated [in research projects] and never heard another word about it. We understand what you’re doing. When we take part in research projects and are left in the dark in the later stages, it’s hard. This exchange [among the whole group] is really important.”

A few other participants nod in agreement. One opens the mic to say: “This research process was a listening environment. We, various women of different ages, are living our experiences [with TFGBV] and each of us in our own way. But it all hits on a very similar point, you know? What it’s like to be a Black woman in this hostile online environment and so on. I hope we can take these findings and use them as a point of analysis. […] Thank you for your attention, and for the care you took.”

We, the researchers, wrap up the call and thank our conversation partners. Once again their words bring a necessary reminder that in our feminist research practice, the commitment to research participants, creating pathways for accountability and transparency, and centring care are all things that should be requirements, not add-ons.

***

So, what does happen after we publish our research findings?

Through this research we’ve been gathering stories that relay the horrible impacts of TFGBV and online misogynoir in the lives of Black Brazilian women and the ways we/they are “finding chasms” – building community and connection, creating strategies for collective care and for organising, recognising the power dynamics embedded in digital technologies. We hope this research will indeed act as a springboard to more things: highlighting the pervasiveness of TFGBV and misogynoir against Black women in our country, bringing forth a much-needed discussion about their consequences, and contributing to expanding the possibilities for Black women in Brazil to engage with digital technologies on our terms.

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