This module is about facilitating learning and building capacity on creating safe online spaces, specifically for groups and individuals at-risk. Through this module you can explore, through activities and discussions, the factors that affect the ability to create spaces where feminist and sexual rights activists and their communities can feel safe. We explore the meaning of such spaces for feminist and sexual rights activists.
By the end of this module, the participants will:
- define what they mean by safe / private online space
- come up with some strategies to create safe online spaces for themselves and their networks
- develop an understanding of privacy issues, and how privacy affects women and their lives
- gain an understanding of the privacy limitations of most social media
- Unpacking ¨Safe¨ - Visioning Exercise
- The Bubble - Visualization Exercise
- Develop Your Internet Dream Place
This module has a lot of topics to cover, so the Learning Activities have been divided into two types: Starter Activities and Deepening Activities.
We suggest starting this module with one of the Starter Activities: Unpacking "Safe", The Bubble, or Develop Your Internet Dream Place — in order for the participants to start exploring the concepts. Depending on your group's goals, these will help ground your group in concepts of safety and privacy.
You can use the Develop Your Internet Dream Place to work with a group that needs to redesign an existing internet space or design a new one with values of safety and privacy.
Then enhance the group´s grasp of the concepts with the Deepening Activities.
- Online Safety ¨Rules¨ is about articulating how the participants want to safeguard their online spaces, but also an opportunity to clarify the basic principles of online safety.
- Privacy, Consent and Safety is an open lecture-type activity where the concepts can be further deepened and clarified.
- Safeguarding Un-Secure Spaces is an activity to make the dream places real including addressing challenges of current design and policy of online spaces being at odds with the dream space visions. If you want to get hands-on with online services, this activity provides guidance for analysizing the settings, policies and norms of spaces. It is not a step-by-step guide to adjusting settings as they change too frequently.
We suggest having a combination of Starter Activities and Deepening activities based on the group´s goals and level of experience.