An award for writing about image-based abuse
The Laadli Media and Advertising Award for Gender Sensitivity for the most difficult writing I have ever done — a longform article on image-based abuse for the first stint of my fellowship at FactorDaily (2023–24). I had struggled in vain to find funds to work on this topic for many years. The co-founder of FactorDaily, Pankaj Mishra responded to a LinkedIn post I published in 2022 asking for work at a time when I was down in the dumps for nearly a year because of trauma and burnout, and deep in debt.
FactorDaily eventually offered me a fellowship on the topic I pitched. With that, I came full circle. I was a technology journalist and editor once, and I first picked up the topic of image-based abuse in 2013 when I was the editor of a project at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and the internet. It is a challenging topic to research, report, and write because of its very nature — image-based abuse is a criminal act and many victim-survivors are understandably averse to speaking about their experience. Funding for this topic was hard to come by. It is only now that deepfake content has become commonplace that it is getting public attention and scrutiny in India. Commonly known by the misnomer ‘revenge p*rn’, it is an under-researched and under-reported topic in India. Much remains to be done.
Get Rohini Lakshané’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Much gratitude to Pankaj Mishra and the rest of the team at Factor Daily, especially Somesh Kumar whose brilliant infographics visually embody my work. In his post reflecting on this award and the winning entry, Mishra writes, ‘… A good fellowship tells someone like Rohini: bring everything you’ve seen and learned. Let journalism learn from you, and help us tell stories that treat people with dignity.’
Gratitude also to the Laadli Media Awards team at Population First, the august jury, and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) India. The jury called the article ‘a deeply researched and impactful piece on the growing menace of image-based abuse,’ while stating that it ‘explains with clarity how technology enables such violations and why women are disproportionately affected. Combining facts, trends, and analysis, it raises urgent questions and makes a compelling case for public awareness and systemic action.’
Image-based abuse online and offline has been an organised criminal activity for nearly two decades in India, ramping up with spreading access to the internet and affordable devices. It can happen to anyone, anywhere. Even when image-based abuse is done for personal revenge it’s an attack on the target’s dignity for real or perceived wrongs. It is the victim-survivor, and not the perpetrator who is expected to bear shame for it, which is why my project is titled ‘Crying Shame.’
I was raised in Mumbai. It is validation on a different plane to be presented an award there. This one is named ‘Laadli,’ meaning ‘beloved girl’ in Hindi, usually used to refer to a darling child.
My LinkedIn post from the time the winning entry was first published (August 2024): https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7235549185662468096-Lev3/
