Inspiring Minds seeks to broaden awareness and impact of graduate student research, while enhancing transferable skills. Students were challenged to describe their research, scholarship or creative activity in 150 or fewer words to share with our community.
Networked Masculinity In Toxic Techno-culture
The unmoderated freedom of expression and the privilege of anonymity on social media platforms allow for expressing oneself freely, along with the broadcasting of disinformation and hate propaganda that can shape people’s perceptions and beliefs. These racist or misogynistic information-sharing practices are heavily influenced by the participation of men in the virtual space. My research focuses on the role of masculinity in the virtual space that facilitates toxic techno-culture to produce online hate speech and enables it to influence offline racial or gender- based violence. My aim is to conduct a comparative analysis of white masculinity in Canada with Hindu masculinity in India to show the construction of virtual masculinity in different cultural, social, and political settings. I also aim to investigate the conflict between the right to freedom of expression and the right of minority communities to be free from violence in the virtual world.
Lutfun Nahar
PhD candidate, Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies
Faculty of Arts and Humanities - Western University
Supervisors
Lutfun Nahar is a PhD Student in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Western University. She holds a Master of Arts in Gender Studies from Simon Fraser University, a Master of Laws from Lund University in Sweden, and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of London, United Kingdom. Lutfun has also been called to the Bar-at-law from Lincoln’s Inn, United Kingdom, and enrolled as an Advocate in the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. She has worked as a lawyer for fifteen years in both the public and private sectors of Bangladesh. She has been involved as a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme project relating to improving democracy through Parliamentary Development.
You can connect with Lutfun via email at bnahar@uwo.ca.
View Lutfun's work as it appears in the Inspiring Minds Digital Collection: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds/414/.