General

In recent years, scholars have increasingly pointed out the ways in which large technology firms, social media platforms and AI have fueled democratic backsliding, and provided the data infrastructure and informatic platforms for war, violence and ethnic cleansing around the world. Various names have been proposed for the conjuncture of Big Tech and the rise of authoritarian regimes: technocapitalism, technofeudalism, digital authoritarianism, technofascism, and others.

It is this last term – technofascism – that this learning community will explore through a feminist lens, involving questions like:

1. How are contemporary authoritarian regimes mobilizing technology, AI, and data to erode democratic norms and institutions and undergird state violence against groups targeted for their gender, race, class or ethnic identity?
2. Is technofascism an apt term to describe this phenomenon? What are the parallels to and divergences from historic and contemporary fascisms, especially when considering gender, race, colonial, and labor dynamics? 
3. What role do the financial incentives and patriarchal ideologies of technology firms, particularly "Big Tech" firms based in Silicon Valley, play in enabling authoritarian collaboration and capture? How does this entanglement take form in different parts of the world (e.g., places in the Global South being used as laboratories for new technologies in connection with authoritarian regimes)?
4. How are feminist activists, grassroots movements and civil society organizations defending democracy, using tech to care for each other, and proposing alternative technological futures?

Join us to explore these questions together!

What: Online learning community, including readings, guest lectures, and asynchronous discussions.

When: Meets every third Tuesday of the month, for 2 hours on Zoom (12pm EST, 6pm CET), from Sept 2026 - May 2027

Who: All are welcome, but we request that you please click the button to register and agree to our code of conduct. The TLDR is that all viewpoints are welcome but trolling and harassing behavior is not.

Join the learning community!

What's the monthly time commitment?

• 2 hours: Monthly virtual meetings to listen to a guest lecture and discuss the readings.
• 2-10 hours: We will have 2 "homework" readings each month. Depending on how fast you read and what your native language is, the time you spend here might vary.
• 1 hour: We will ask each participant to post one reading response to the discussion board each month.
• TOTAL: 5-13 hours per month

Program

• Tues, Sep 15th, 12pm-2pm ET: Meet the Organizers
• Tues, Oct 20th, 12pm-2pm ET: Fascism 101 with an emphasis on the Black Radical Tradition
  • Guests: Dr. Jeanelle K. Hope and Dr. Bill Mullen, authors of The Black Antifascist Tradition
• Tues, Nov 17th, 12pm-2pm ET: Tech Oligarchy: Labor, Platforms and Authoritarianism
  • Guests: Dr. Julie E. Cohen and Dr. Rosana Pinheiro-Machado
• Tues, Dec 15th, 12pm-2pm ET: Microfascism
  • Guest: Dr. Patricia MacCormack
• Tues, Feb 16th, 12pm-2pm ET: AI & Eugenics
  • Guest: Dr. Thema Monroe-White
• Tues, Mar 16th, 12pm-2pm ET: TBD
• Tues, Apr 20th, 12pm-2pm ET: TBD
• Tues, May 18th, 12pm-2pm ET: Festival of Resistance and Liberation

What language is the program in?

The language of the sessions and readings is English, but we will have live interpretation of all lectures into Spanish.

About the Organizers

Catherine D’Ignazio is a hacker mama, scholar, and artist/designer. Her 2020 book from MIT Press, Data Feminism, co-authored with Lauren Klein, charts a course for more ethical and empowering data science practices. Her second book, Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action (MIT Press, 2024) is an extended case study about grassroots data activism to end gender-related violence. Her forthcoming book, 10 Ways to Stop Technofascism (MIT Press, 2027), is a resistance manual for the general public to abolish Big Tech, refuse AI-fueled authoritarian violence, and build the technology that we deserve. D’Ignazio is an Associate Professor of Urban Science and Planning at MIT and directs the Data + Feminism Lab.

Alessandra Jungs de Almeida is a Wallenberg Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center for Gender, Peace & Security (CGPS) in the Department of War Studies at the Swedish Defence University. She is also an affiliated researcher at the Data + Feminism Lab at MIT, where she is a co-PI in the project “Technofascism, Feminism and Democracy”. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) and spent two years (2022–2024) as a visiting doctoral researcher and one year (2024- 2025) as a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is affiliated with the Data Against Feminicide project and the Center for Gender Studies in Foreign Policy and International Politics (NEGPEI–UFSC).

Becca Lewis is an assistant professor in Comparative Media Studies at MIT. She was previously a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Stanford University Department of Communication, where she obtained her PhD in 2024. Her work examines the ideas and politics that shape Silicon Valley and the internet, with a particular focus on right-wing ideology. She previously worked as a researcher at the Data & Society Research Institute, where she published flagship reports on far-right online broadcasting, media manipulation, and disinformation. Her work has been published in academic journals including New Media & Society, Social Media + Society, and American Behavioral Scientist, and in news outlets such as The Guardian and Business Insider. In 2022, she served as an expert witness in the defamation lawsuit brought against Alex Jones by the parents of a Sandy Hook shooting victim.

Erik Sandelin is a WASP-HS postdoctoral fellow at the Data+Feminism Lab and the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing group at MIT. As a designer and researcher, Sandelin makes prototypes to activate and investigate gracious modes of life. He holds a PhD in Art, Technology, and Design from KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Konstfack in Stockholm. In his dissertation, Design and Grace, Sandelin develops the concept of grace (actively not doing what you are able to do) to decouple action from force and passivity from resignation in design. Sandelin is a co-founder of interaction design and innovation studio Unsworn.

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