Over the past year, InternetLab’s research area Internet & Gender, Race and Other Social Markers closed research stages and began new ones. The most important moment of the year was the release of the book The Body is The Code (in Portuguese), which gathers information from a year and a half of research about the juridical confrontation of NCII — non-consensual intimate images dissemination, or revenge porn — in Brazil. The book compiled conclusions from the reading of decisions from the São Paulo Court of Justice about the theme, along with a series of interviews with people who work on the Justice system and a case study about the TOP 10 case in Grajaú and Parelheiros, in São Paulo’s south region.

During the previous months, the team had been presenting the partial results in academic and non-academic events, like Mulheres de Expressão, organized by Article 19 and InternetLab for the International Women’s Week, and the III Colloquium on Research and Human Rights Actions, at UFABC, both in March, in the San Francisco RightsCon, in April, and in a presentation at the Carmo SESC, in May.

We released the book itself in a debate panel held at Ação Educativa. It was a broad debate about the research and the topic by Ketlin Santos, of IBEAC/Sementeiras de Direitos, Elânia Francisca, of the Mulheres na Luta Collective, Marta Machado, criminal law professor at FGV/SP and Silvia Chakian, public prosecutor, with the authors Mariana Valente, Natália Neris and Juliana Ruiz.

We then began to present this research results in a considerable number of events and texts, for example:

• Article published on Sesc’s E magazine (in Portuguese);
• Special Interview given to Conjur;
• Event about algorithms, law and society at Harvard University;
• Event held at the Campinas City Council by the Municipal Secretariat of Citizenship, Assistance and Social Inclusion;
• Event by the Center of Research and Formation of the Sesc São Paulo;
• 6th Empirical Research in Law Meeting (EPED);
• Event about rape culture of CPECC — Center of Research and Extension in Criminal Sciences, of the USP Faculty of Law;
• 10th Annual Meeting of the Brazilian Forum of Public Security;
• Seminar: “Virtual democracy: the Internet as a tool for mobilization and channel for disseminating threats”, promoted by the Konrad Adenauer Brasil Foundation, in partnership with Igarapé Institute and the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB).
• II Congress of Cybernetic Security, by FIESP.

In the first semester of 2016, InternetLab established a partnership with the Center of Law, Internet and Society of the USP Faculty of Law, which offers an extension discipline by each semester; the first semestral module done together was on “Revenge Porn and gender violences on the Internet”, in which, from the research results that originated the Body is the Code book, we discussed with the students articles about judicial and extrajudicial exits for violence against women on the Internet and analysed draft bills on the topic. We also held, in the activity’s scope, an open meeting to discuss gender violence, freedom of speech and the Brazilian Civil Rights Framework, with lawyers Gisele Truzzi e Laura Tresca of Article 19. As an activity of module conclusion, the students wrote a “policy brief”, critical document and contribution to the main draft bill about revenge porn (no. 5.555/13) and its other attached drafts.

After some months of debates and discussion of versions, we began a process of articulation with relevant stakeholders in the National Congress: the rapporteur of the draft bill, Congresswoman Tia Eron, and members of feminine groups in the Chamber and the Senate. At last, the NDIS students and InternetLab team delivered the policy brief directly to the rapporteur in Brasília, on the day predicted for the voting of the draft bill in the Commission of Constitution, Justice and Citizenship of the Chamber; the rapporteur committed to adopting some of the suggestions and the experience was evaluated very positively by the students responsible for elaborating the document.

In the sense of amplifying our discussions about other social markers, aside from gender, we took part in the “Racism and Hate Speech on the Internet: narratives and counter-narratives Conference” promoted by the Harvard University Berkman Center and the VoJo Brasil Platform and, of the event “Human Rights and Diversity Formation: discrimination on the Internet”, promoted by the School of the Public Defender’s Office of São Paulo.

Still on the line of starting new debate fronts, we began, in August, the project “Internet, Voices and Votes”. During the municipal election debates in 2016, we monitored and reported happenings that involved gender, race and other social markers, the electoral processes and the use of information and communication technologies. We published a series of bulletins, and we are preparing a report with the memory of these happenings, to be published in the beginning of 2017.

One of the last activities of the year was a new experience: helping in the promotion of a meeting between Facebook employees and activists and representatives of social movements for the discussion of the difficulties they face in the platform and better counter-narrative practices that make Human Rights stronger. Some photos of the meeting:

The team enters 2017 with a comparative research about NCII/revenge porn around the world, the finishing touches on a summary of the Body is the Code book in English, and planning an empirical research about access, participation and technology appropriation by subalternized groups in Brazil. Follow the project’s page to see these results.