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ety of hashtag campaigns: #JyotiSinghPandey, #DelhiGangRape, #Amanat, #Damini, #Nirbhaya. They also expressed their frustration with the police and other authority figures through a different series of hashtags such as #justiceforjyoti. In the immediate aftermath of the gang rape, people changed their Facebook and Whatsapp profile photos with a black oval to register solidarity and to communicate their anger and helplessness (Losh 2014). In some instances, media practitioners turned to Twitter to mobilize public opinion. For instance, TV news anchor Arnab Goswami started a hashtag campaign #NirbhayaInsulted to mobilize support for the ban on the film India’s Daughter. In the years since the gang rape, activist groups have established sites such as I am Nirbhaya to archive and curate video accounts of gender-based violence. Mainstream media covered these digital campaigns and speculated on their ability to mobilize social change. However, the most noteworthy aspect of Nirbhaya, I contend, was the proliferation of feminist commentary on blog sites, such as Kafila and Moor. These sites were not affiliated with mainstream media outlets and showcased a range of voices, which offered incisive and nuanced critique of media coverage of the case, police inaction, and the state’s indifference to gender-based violence. In addition, the feminist voices articulated clearly the perils of turning to the state to seek carceral solutions to rape. These sites became a productive arena for understanding the social, political, and institutional factors underpinning gender-based violence. In Breadsdorp, there was a strikingly muted social media response to the local gang rape. Earlier, in response to instances of sexual harassment at Rhodes College and other rape cases, activists had used Twitter to initiate a series of campaigns such as #1in3; #IAmOneinThree; #StopRape. Feminists in South Africa lamented that despite the striking similarities between the two gang rapes, local communities were not activated into protest. “Our Jantar Mantar moment never came,” South African scholar Joy Watson argues, referring to the location in New Delhi where p rotestors converged (Davies 2014). Local media coverage of Booysen repeatedly drew comparisons with Nirbhaya and activists self-consciously modeled their social media campaigns on their Indian counterparts. In this instance, both media and activists participated in the transnational circuits of digital media and sought to produce a feedback loop within South Africa, but to no avail.
