internet manifestos are not written only for humans ***** internet manifestos are not always serious ***** internet manifestos are not always countercultural ***** internet manifestos are not something else ***** internet manifestos are not self-fulfilling prophecies ***** internet manifestos are not bestsellers ***** internet manifestos are not about internet ***** internet manifestos are not fiction ***** internet manifestos are not non-fiction ***** internet manifestos are not only manifestos ***** internet manifestos are not wish-lists ***** internet manifestos are not always read ***** internet manifestos are not just pixels ***** internet manifestos are not lost in cyber space ***** internet manifestos are not up for sale ***** internet manifestos are not comforting ***** internet manifestos are not the end of the world ***** internet manifestos are not to laugh at ***** internet manifestos are not written only by humans ***** internet manifestos are not over

Reflections

Across the groups, shared questions have emerged: what are actually internet manifestos, how do we define and study them? On this page, we have collected selected notes from research diaries, reflections, descriptions of methodologies, and open questions. Other researchers are welcome to engage with them, argue, borrow, test out or reinterpret.

What are internet manifestos?

Note #1 (cyberfeminist group): A cyberfeminist manifesto is a text that initially discusses the position of women in cyberspace. Such manifestos are often supported by graphic elements and an aesthetic design. They can vary in style tremendously, use colorful and creative design or plain text and more academic language. However, defining what a cyberfeminist manifesto actually is proved to be one of the central questions of our research. The movement itself resisted definition from the start Cyberfeminism's 100 Anti-Theses defines the movement by what it is not, rather than what it is, leaving the term intentionally fluid. We found that there is no clear academic definition of a manifesto, which gave us the freedom to define it ourselves. What we decided to expect from one is: a clear position, some form of demand or hope, and an aesthetic that reflects the politics.

Methodology

Note #1 (cyberfeminist group): We divided the timeline of cyberfeminist manifestos between us, each member taking a period from 1985 to the present. We researched the manifestos, key thinkers, and surrounding discourse of each period, then brought the findings together into a collective mind map. We also looked at the Cyberfeminism Index and the VNS Matrix Manifesto as central reference points, and compiled a draft website and Figma document to visualise our work. Individual essays allowed each member to go deeper into a specific question raised by the research.

Limitations

Note #1 (cyberfeminist group): One of the main things we noticed is that there are very few cyberfeminist manifestos but an enormous amount of discourse around them. This made it difficult to draw clean boundaries around what we were studying. We also noticed significant gap periods, particularly 2005 to 2009, where almost nothing was written. Whether this reflects a genuine absence or simply gaps in what we were able to find remains an open question. Additionally, cyberfeminism has splintered over time into subcategories glitch feminism, technofeminism, xenofeminism which made it hard to decide what counted as cyberfeminist and what did not.

Why study internet manifestos?

Note #1 (cyberfeminist group, personal, anonymous): What drew me to this research was not just what the manifestos say, but how their appearance and disappearance over time tells how the internet has offered a kind of emancipatory space, one where identity can be explored anonymously, outside the constraints of physical social structures. But also about what tools people reach for when they want to form communities around shared ideas, and how those tools change. Watching when manifestos were written, and when they weren't, says as much about the political imagination of a moment as it does about feminism or technology. That tension between the internet as a space of liberation and the internet as a space of surveillance and control leaves much space for discussion.