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Abstract

This article examines how cyberfeminist politics in India are shaped by a layered digital divide, focusing on the #MeToo movement in Assam (Northeast India) as a regionally situated site of feminist voices, exclusion, and contested recognition. While digital visibility has enabled new forms of public naming and solidarity, this paper argues that visibility does not automatically translate into justice, as participation and audibility are structured by uneven access, device control, language hierarchies, and policing of credibility. This study is guided by two research questions: 1) How does the digital divide shape who can participate and be recognized within the #MeToo discourse in Assam? and 2) How do cyberfeminist practices negotiate, and at times reproduce, infrastructural and epistemic inequalities online? The digital divide governs not only connectivity but also the terms under which feminist testimony becomes legible, credible, and institutionally actionable. Methodologically, the research is underpinned by a qualitative approach shaped by feminist, postcolonial, and intersectional principles that recognize the importance of situated knowledge, and it is also informed by descriptive quantitative indicators to contextualize the structural conditions of access. The study incorporates feminist critical discourse analysis to look for signs of platforming language, framing, and evaluative cues that influence empowerment, backlash, or recognition patterns. Empirically, the paper triangulates publicly accessible digital traces and media texts surrounding Assam’s #MeToo moment, policy and research documents on digital access, and descriptive access indicators based on authoritative sources: NFHS-5 Assam State Facts Sheet, TRAI performance indicators, and the International Telecommunication Union’s connectivity estimates. This breadth of sources helps to clarify both the nature and scope of the enabling conditions and the limits of digital feminist visibility without collapsing distinct indicators into false equivalencies. The findings fall within four themes: empowerment through platformed visibility, exclusion via infrastructural and linguistic divides, media framing and regional erasure, and intersectional feminist agency as a hybrid and collective practice. This paper concludes by proposing a digital justice lens that evaluates empowerment through equitable participation and recognition rather than mere visibility.

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