While the internet was expected to be a democratising space, our study reveals that forms of public harassment and sexual violence that women experience off-line are also prevalent on-line in India. The study used a survey with 53 respondents and in-depth interviews with 10 to document experiences of technology-mediated gender-based violence. It found that more than half the participants had been sent offensive and derogatory private messages, 46% had received unwanted sexually explicit videos, 19% were coerced into sending explicit videos of themselves, over 15% had been threatened with sexual violence, 19% had been harassed due to an intersectional disadvantage that involved gender and one other social or personal attribute, 17% had been tagged in hateful or humiliating posts, 24.5% had experienced someone trying to steal personal and private information and 18.9% had fake profiles created to impersonate them [doxing]. Some of the participants also reported that they had their movements tracked without their consent and one had their personal devices hacked into. Except for one participant, none had reported it to the police because some didn't know there were legal remedies available and others didn't believe the police would help them. Only one respondent approached the police and that too because she was related to a female officer. Given the young age of the participants (18-21), the majority turned to friends for support when they fell anxious, guilty, or sad. In-depth interviews revealed that respondents were unaware and also hesitant to take legal remedies and emphasises the importance of listening to the victims and believing them. While the scale of this study is small, this is one of the few studies that examines technology-mediated violence against women in the digital sphere and finds that online misogyny has some of the same attributes as misogyny in the real world.
