Silenced Voices: Digital Censorship and the Communication of Gender Issues

When we think about censorship, we usually imagine content being removed. But online, censorship can happen through reduced visibility, inconsistent moderation, changing platform rules, or algorithms that decide which conversations deserve to circulate and which gradually disappear from public view.

This paper emerged from a question that has stayed with me throughout my research on technology and gender: what happens when the information people need is not removed, but simply becomes harder to find?

Working with organisations communicating about women's health and gender equality, I kept encountering similar stories: posts that suddenly stopped reaching audiences, educational content flagged as inappropriate, and creators avoiding certain words because they knew they would affect visibility. None of these experiences, on their own, looked like censorship, but together they revealed something much more structural.

In Silenced Voices: Digital Censorship and the Communication of Gender Issues, I explore how platform governance and algorithmic moderation shape the communication of gender-related issues, and how these systems influence not only what we see online, but also whose knowledge becomes visible, credible, and shareable.

Rather than treating digital censorship as a series of isolated moderation decisions, the paper argues that it should be understood as part of the infrastructures through which platforms organise public knowledge. These infrastructures shape access to information, influence advocacy strategies, and ultimately affect the ways communities can build, learn, and support one another.

This work sits at the intersection of technology, gender, and digital rights, and reflects many of the questions that continue to guide my research: how digital infrastructures shape participation, whose voices are amplified, and what forms of knowledge become possible in AI-mediated environments.

You can read the full paper here.