“The line between online and offline violence doesn’t exist.”
Gendered disinformation has a formula: target her character, weaponize caste and religion, let the platforms watch, and count on the state to do nothing. Journalist Pallavi Pundir dissects this architecture of harm from the evolution and erasure of marginalized women’s voices online to journalism’s addiction to outrage, platform complicity, and the cross-border solidarity that keeps hope alive.
writing – Sejal
About the Series
Gendered Realities: Speaking Back to Disinformation is a three-part interview series that brings together voices of journalists, researchers, and digital rights experts who have been at the frontlines of documenting and resisting gendered disinformation. From uncovering how hate is seeded and spread across platforms, to highlighting the real-world consequences for women, especially those from marginalised communities, this series explores the architecture of online harm and the urgent need for systemic change.
In Part 1, we speak with Pallavi Pundir, a journalist whose reporting spans a decade and a half across India and beyond. Pallavi breaks down how disinformation operates differently depending on caste, religion, geography and class and why the silence or complicity of tech platforms and media houses keeps this violence alive.
Pallavi Pundir is a seasoned Indian journalist with 14+ years of experience reporting on gender, politics, technology, and social justice across national and international newsrooms. Her reporting explores how digital platforms both empowered and endangered women, especially those from minority and marginalized communities. From exposing the underbelly of the manosphere to documenting the shrinking online space for women post- #MeToo, Pallavi’s work reveals how caste, religion, and location compound gendered disinformation.
The Evolving Digital Landscape
KL: In your reporting over the years, how have you seen the digital space evolving for women from rural or semi-urban areas?
Pallavi: I became a journalist in 2011 at the Indian Express in New Delhi, and that was also the year I joined Twitter. Instagram and Facebook were around, but were mainly for connecting with old friends.
In terms of voicing opinions, Facebook was still a place for sharing everyday photos, without much political content. In many ways, it imitated Orkut, which was a massive social media networking space.
The politicization came with Twitter. A lot of journalists like me who lived in major cities joined the platform to keep track of conversations, essentially to understand the pulse of the city. Reflecting on it now, I realize the space was primarily used by urban, upper caste, upper class, majority-religion people.
These were also the kinds of people I saw in my newsroom. It was rare to see people from small towns in major city newsrooms. So, I was a part of that echo chamber, that bubble, even in the online space.
In the early 2010s, women were less visible online, and the ones we saw were typically urban, upper caste, and liberal in their presence. As someone who grew up mostly in small cities, including in the Northeast, I didn’t see much representation or articulation of issues around identity, regional politics, or caste. In fact, I clearly remember that back then, a lot of conversations were very politically incorrect. Many people posted personal thoughts that were inherently casteist. That was just how social media was.
I did notice a sudden shift in 2014–2015 when I started seeing a lot more visibility of women. However, the algorithm still didn’t amplify voices from smaller towns or rural areas. TikTok was a major platform where many small-town and rural women’s voices and faces were finally seen.
Then, in 2019, there was an explosion of online presence. What stood out to me was the assertion of presence in this online space. What was once a bastion of upper caste, liberal city folks was slowly being taken over. This is when the digital space opened up to authentic voices from the ground, from rural areas and tier-two cities. This period also intersected with major people’s movements, many of which were dominated by women, like the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests that took over cities like Delhi and Mumbai.
This is when we saw a real explosion of diversity in voices. I believe a lot of elite voices also reckoned with the fact that it was time for them to step back and make space while marginalized women asserted their presence. Also, by this time, users could see beyond the artifice or appropriation that was happening on social media.
So, this is the evolution I’ve seen in terms of the visibility of women from small towns and rural areas. I should add that these spaces were still limited to English-speaking women, even women from these places had to speak in English in order to be heard.
The space was still limited, but it had evolved. Around 2019, the voices became louder, more brazen, and fearless. I think alongside that fearlessness, the hate, the manosphere, and far-right trolls also evolved.
Disinformation vs. Misinformation
KL: How would you differentiate between gendered disinformation and misinformation that is faced by women who may not be in political spheres but are still present on social media or the digital landscape?
Pallavi: That’s a very good question. I feel every person should know the difference.
Misinformation is when false information is spread without necessarily having intent to harm. It can stem from misconceptions or biases related to gender, religion, caste, and other identities.
Disinformation, on the other hand, is false information that is deliberately created to harm an individual or a community. It is not random, there is always a source behind it. It doesn’t appear out of nowhere. There is an entity that manufactures it, propaganda is one example of how disinformation is used.
The idea is to create an information crisis that turns public opinion against someone. When this is seen through a gendered lens, especially in a country like India, it is deeply rooted in patriarchy and misogyny. It also becomes more complex when it intersects with other identities like religion, caste, and class.
Patterns of Gendered Disinformation (GD)
KL: Your work covers a range of geographies and incidents where online hate builds offline, from Kerala and Karnataka to Haridwar. What patterns have you noticed in how GD operates differently in these contexts?
Pallavi: The first pattern, which both you and I can recognize, is that the initial hate targeting any woman online is usually directed at her quote-unquote virtues or morality, often referencing her intimate past. The idea is to discredit her as a reliable narrator of her story.
In patriarchal settings, this is meant to not just humiliate the woman, but to humiliate her family, her partner, her friends, and her entire community. The goal is to isolate the woman by targeting her virtues and morality, separating her from the people who bring her support and strength.
So, I think that’s the first thing we’ve all noticed: whenever a woman is targeted, the focus immediately goes to her sexual behavior or intimate relationships.
The most recent example I can give is of the pro tennis player, Radhika Yadav, who was allegedly murdered by her father. If you go on Twitter right now, the first tweets you see are all the same, claiming she was murdered because she had relations with a Muslim man. That narrative, then, is used to justify the murder. It’s plain out there to see.
Second, the gendered disinformation almost always panders to people’s larger insecurities around issues of caste and religion.
For example, a couple of years ago, during the Olympics, I did a story on how the family of hockey player Vandana Katariya faced casteist attacks. That really revealed to me how deep India’s insecurities are when it comes to the social mobility of Dalits. Vandana has this beautiful story of rising beyond what the caste system prescribed for her, she’s an Olympic athlete and a stellar team captain. That’s far more than most Indians can even imagine.
Before the team lost, everyone celebrated her humble beginnings. People love a rags-to-riches story. But the moment the team lost, the narrative flipped. Suddenly, people were using her caste identity to attack not just her but also affirmative action and reservations more broadly. It exposed this simmering resentment toward people seen as lower or outside the caste hierarchy rising in the social order. That wave of hate and vitriol we saw during the Olympics, that’s what it represented to me.
In a nutshell, gendered disinformation often panders to the country’s larger insecurities around caste and religion. Most of the women I’ve interviewed say that gendered disinformation doesn’t feel digital, it feels physical. That really gives me goosebumps. I’ve faced it, and I’m sure any woman who is visible and vocal online has too.
But for marginalized women, when you receive a certain kind of threat, it feels as real as physical violence. That’s the intention of those threats, those messages, that disinformation, it’s meant to provoke fear. And we’ve seen in the past how rumors on WhatsApp have led to actual mob lynchings, like in 2019.
For women, that threat is more real because we already experience so much everyday violence, whether through words, in the digital space, or simply by stepping outside, where some man will do something he thinks is random, but to us it feels deeply intentional. So the line between online and offline violence doesn’t exist. The threat of online violence is always as real as the threat of physical violence.
And, of course, the ultimate idea of all this combined is to silence women, but not just one woman. It’s to silence all women. So, if a Muslim, Dalit, or Adivasi woman faces online threats, the idea is to send a message to other women of these communities.
But there’s also a message to allies from privileged backgrounds that they too can be targeted with similar violence if they choose to extend support. Still, it’s important to remember that minority women face disproportionately more violence than privileged allies for speaking up. Which is why the responsibility to speak up online should fall more on privileged allies than on marginalized women. They have more safety, more access, and more power, and that comes with the responsibility to use it.
Navigating Online Attacks
KL: Your reporting highlights how identities like caste and religion compound online attacks, often leading to impunity for the abusers. In your experience, how do women, especially from marginalized backgrounds, navigate, alter, or resist in digital spaces after experiencing targeted online attacks or gendered disinformation?
Pallavi: So, if you look at data on gender-based violence in India, it shows that Dalit and Muslim women face disproportionately more violence than women from general categories. Of course, all women face violence, but it’s compounded for women from marginalized communities.
Alongside this, there’s another dataset that shows how much impunity men enjoy. Officially, the conviction rate hovers around $27\%$ to $28\%$, but we all know it’s often lower in reality. In digital spaces, I believe both the violence and the impunity are even more pronounced.
For example, I recently interviewed a Muslim woman who was targeted in three different forms of gendered and Islamophobic online hate. She went to the police, but they didn’t understand the nature of online trolling, especially the kind Muslim women face. The investigating officer filed it as a case of stalking, which implied she personally knew the person abusing her online. This shows how the legal system often fails to grasp how hate manifests on digital platforms, especially for marginalized women. This complete impunity, where you don’t see law enforcement officials really cracking down on online hate or labeling it correctly, makes the woman seem accountable for the hate. This is essentially how gendered hate and violence manifest in real life as well. So, I think it’s the level of impunity that becomes a more heightened trigger point in the digital space.
As for how women cope and resist, I can compare my experience with those of marginalized women. I come from a privileged caste and religion in India. When I was trolled, I simply went offline. But in my interviews with women from marginalized communities: Muslim women, Dalit women, I noticed something different.
I remember speaking to several anti-caste influencers a few years ago. That was when there was a lot of conversation around how the algorithm does not support anti-caste voices and how those voices were being made invisible. Over the years, as I kept reaching out to them for different stories, I saw that many of them chose a different path.
They told me that they’ve since toned down their presence because there’s just too much online hate. Sometimes, you want to preserve your mental health. So, I’d say this kind of hate and scrutiny definitely leads to silencing. When women choose to stay off social media, that is a form of silencing.
Many end up anonymizing their presence. They create smaller, more trustworthy bubbles, both online and offline. But it takes years to get rid of that fear, not just for them, but for their families too. From what I’ve seen, silencing and anonymizing their presence is often the first reaction most women have after being targeted.
Media and Platform Responsibility
KL: You’ve also written about how tech platforms amplify footage of gendered violence, and how newsrooms often chase rage bait rather than offering context or care. What kind of responsibility do you think media platforms and tech companies hold in shaping and sustaining these toxic ecosystems?
Pallavi: Just a couple of months ago, the Reuters Institute came out with a report saying that $71\%$ of people prefer online platforms for news, and $49\%$ rely on social media. For journalists like us, that’s both a bit of sad news and also an opportunity.
I’ve noticed a rise in creators and platforms that are now seen as news sources, and that’s blurring the line between content and journalism. People are no longer able to tell the difference between the two. That, to me, is the more dangerous part.
I’ve been a journalist for 14 years now, and over time, I’ve had to unlearn this tendency to pursue news that provokes extreme emotions. Let me give you an example. When I joined Vice News in 2019, I worked with an amazing editor named Sahar. We were building a South Asia platform together, and she started this exercise with me. Every day, I would send her a list of five to ten important news stories from India or South Asia. And she would ask me to add one line under each story: “What emotion does this piece of news evoke in you?”
Over time, I realized I was mostly sending news that made me angry. It wasn’t just the stories, but also how I was writing them so that the audience would also feel angry. That exercise helped me take a step back and reflect on why we’re constantly angry. I think a lot of newsrooms are still stuck in that cycle. Even when they cover serious issues like gender-based violence or gendered disinformation, the framing often starts with violence.
I come from a conventional Indian media background, and I do think many journalists are trained to respond only when something terrible happens. But I believe that rage bait isn’t the only way to tell a story. It’s important to acknowledge that while visuals of violence might spark a conversation, they’re not always constructive.
I’m not saying we need to only tell happy stories, but India still lags in reporting meaningfully on gender, especially when it involves marginalized women. We can’t keep waiting for atrocities to happen in order to talk about policy, reform, or the everyday realities of women’s lives.
We also need to cover stories about women in employment, women in agriculture, women and property rights. Their lives and safety aren’t just defined by online hate or sexual violence. So yes, I do think media and tech platforms have played a major role in sustaining toxic ecosystems. And they need to seriously rethink the lens through which they tell these stories.
KL: I’d like to know if you can share any example where you saw a platform either in action or inaction, something that directly influenced the trajectory of a case, either helping the survivors or worsening the backlash?
Pallavi: Honestly, I only have examples where platforms were inactive, and that inaction made things worse. I think the worst-case scenario was the Sushant Singh Rajput conspiracy. What started as a conversation about mental health quickly devolved into full-blown gender disinformation targeting a prominent Bollywood actress. It became dystopian. This one case intersected with so many things, mental health, gender, nationalism, even regional politics. None of it helped anyone involved, especially not the survivor.
Another example is the Hathras case. The amount of online disinformation and speculation around the girl and her family led to a vicious media trial. That trial did not just play out online, it translated into real-world harm. Reporters camped outside the family’s home, invaded their privacy, and painted narratives that were not just insensitive but dangerous. The family had to flee Hathras. So that, to me, was a complete collapse of all the systems that are supposed to protect survivors. None of the platforms stepped in to slow the damage.
And I think we can also talk about the MeToo movement. While it created space for survivors to speak, the platforms did not anticipate or act on the backlash. That vacuum allowed the rise of men’s rights activism and the global manosphere, which has now taken deep root in India too. In all these examples, it was platform inaction that enabled disinformation and worsened the backlash.
Global Comparisons and Cross-Border Solidarity
KL: You’ve also reported on gendered disinformation in countries like Egypt and Pakistan. What are some key differences and similarities you’ve observed in how it is weaponized in India compared to other places?
Pallavi: Absolutely. In my reporting across Asia, especially in Pakistan, the political and social climate is deeply hostile to women. One example that stood out was how angry men used technology to create fake posters to frame women in blasphemy cases. Blasphemy in Pakistan is punishable by death.
That was shocking to witness. It forced organizers of the Aurat March to go into hiding. Women were literally underground. While I was in India, I called some of them. Speaking to them made it very clear that gendered disinformation can lead to direct state action against women.
In India, we haven’t seen the same level of state-led violence, but there is clear impunity and institutional discrimination. The “love jihad” conspiracy, for example, started as online disinformation and later turned into a real law. That is a major similarity I see: Online hate very quickly becomes real-world policy or violence.
Another example I remember is from Egypt, during the Suez Canal incident in 2021. A woman, who was Egypt’s first female sea captain, was wrongly blamed for the ship blocking the canal. When I interviewed her, she said something that really stayed with me: Most of the disinformation about her was in English, not Arabic, which suggested it did not originate in Egypt. Most Egyptian social media users communicate in Arabic. So, she was caught in a global wave of gendered disinformation that was both misogynistic and Islamophobic. She was targeted not just for being a woman, but also for being an Egyptian Muslim.
KL: Despite the violence and erasure, are there any individuals or collectives you’ve come across who are pushing back effectively against gendered disinformation, either online or offline?
Pallavi: Khabar Lahariya is the number one example I can think of. They address gender disinformation through an intersectional lens, but also help journalists like me rethink what journalism can look like when it’s led by women. They do amazing work.
Another organization I’d mention is the Bebak Collective. They do incredible work and are led by the vivacious Haseena Khan. What stood out to me is how they link gender justice to legal reform. That connection is powerful.
And there’s also the RATI Foundation. They run India’s first internet hotline to report child sexual abuse material and are working to build safer online spaces for women and children. These three are at the top of my list.
Shifting Journalistic Practice
KL: What forms of storytelling or journalism do you think can better resist the patterns of gendered disinformation and create more space for truth, context, and care? Because, as you mentioned, disinformation is not just about spreading false information. It’s also about gatekeeping the right information. So what can we do to make it better in our journalistic or storytelling practices?
Pallavi: I think the first step most journalism spaces need to take is hiring women from diverse backgrounds. All the data and surveys point to the same thing every year, but nothing changes. The majority of journalists in English-language platforms, especially, are upper caste. Even in Hindi-language platforms, it’s mostly the same. And even when there is some diversity in hiring, the top-level positions are always occupied by upper caste, mostly Hindu, majority-religion people. That needs to change.
Secondly, I’d say we need to go beyond metropolitan cities. Over the years, I’ve seen people express a lot of shock about certain kinds of news from smaller towns, cities, or villages, whether it’s progressive stories, crimes, or local-level initiatives. This happens because mainstream media doesn’t cover these areas regularly. In Delhi, for example, if one neighborhood gets flooded, it becomes a multi-day story. But we don’t know what’s happening in, say, Uttarakhand, unless a landslide kills a bus full of tourists from other parts of the country. So, there’s a need to go beyond major cities.
As we discussed earlier, gender reporting also needs to move beyond just covering atrocities. It should examine how policies and laws work or don’t in everyday life. There’s so much news about employment, property ownership, economic independence, and climate change, but none of it is reported through the lens of women or marginalized women unless something tragic happens. That has to change.
And finally, I’m a big fan of cross-border collaborations. One report that Khabar Lahariya worked on with a Singapore-based organization called The Continentalist is titled A Woman’s World. It’s a beautiful story that looks at how women occupy public spaces across different Asian countries. It offers an alternate, more positive narrative. It allows us to see a collective grief, struggle, and resilience that goes beyond our own community or borders. So, I think we need to move beyond our small worlds, live in the larger ecosystem, and address this as a bigger, shared issue.
Hope and Systemic Change
KL: In the current political climate, what gives you hope? What kind of structural or narrative shifts do you think are needed for the internet to become a safer space for marginalized genders?
Pallavi: Right now, tech platforms are removing fact-checking and moderation tools, so I wouldn’t say I’m very hopeful about the internet becoming a safer space. But what does give me hope, more generally in life, is the humanity I see in the people I meet while reporting. That’s really the only thing that keeps me going in journalism.
There aren’t many things that bring hope, especially when you’re reporting on gendered disinformation or gender-based violence. But once in a while, you meet someone who reminds you that empathy still exists. That helps me carry on.
I’ll give you an example. Last year, I was part of a South Asia journalism program. There were women from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, and only men from Bangladesh. We sat in a public park in London, something many of us had never done freely in our own countries, and we spoke about what it’s like being women and being women journalists where we come from. We realized we were living the same realities, just across different borders. That sense of shared experience, that kind of community building beyond borders, gave me hope.
This is also why I wish more newsrooms and media organizations would work closely with journalists from different parts of the country. Not just to publish their stories, but to understand what they’re covering, what they’re going through, and how they’re feeling. It’s the humanity in people, and these moments of connection, that still make me believe some form of change is possible.
KL: What systemic changes from tech platforms, civil society, or media, do you believe are urgently needed to push back against the rising tide of gendered disinformation?
Pallavi: I think right now we’re facing the crisis of what constitutes disinformation in our country, where the definition is controlled and manipulated by the powers that be in a way that benefits them, and none of it benefits women. So, in order to combat gender disinformation, we first need to fight the powers that be that have reduced the idea of disinformation to something that goes against the state.
I feel that in a lot of ways, women who are vocal online, just the idea of their presence, also goes against this very patriarchal, misogynistic state and the institutions that we have. And I feel that’s why a lot of the hate that women face is permitted, the impunity often means that the state allows it to happen. Our governments and authorities are allowing it to happen because they don’t see anything wrong with it, because they ascribe to certain norms of misogyny and patriarchy.
I’m not a policy person or a lawyer, and I don’t think tech platforms will do anything on their own, by the way, because this chaos benefits them, it fuels them and keeps them relevant in a struggling democracy like ours. But I do feel that the media has a huge role in disseminating information and holding tech platforms accountable.
I just want to add one thing: when I was younger, there used to be this idea of citizen journalism, which has completely disappeared now. At some point, there were some rare TV channels that used to ask citizens to tell them what was wrong with their neighborhoods. I wish we could go back to that spirit of citizen journalism. We can’t just rely on certain actors to do everything while we sit back at home. So, I do feel that that kind of civic responsibility also has to come from people. I mean, these are all high hopes.
This is Part 1 of our interview series on Gendered Disinformation, where we speak with leading researchers, activists, and thinkers on what it means to be targeted, how resistance is built, and what needs to change across tech, media, policy, and society. Produced by Chambal Media in collaboration with the Association for Progressive Communications (APC). Stay tuned for the next conversation.
यदि आप हमको सपोर्ट करना चाहते है तो हमारी ग्रामीण नारीवादी स्वतंत्र पत्रकारिता का समर्थन करें और हमारे प्रोडक्ट KL हटके का सब्सक्रिप्शन लें’
