間眅埶AV

I did not expect to find myself tearing up at an academic conference. But then again, CONDUITS isn���t your average gathering of researchers. It is one of those rare academic spaces where theory meets raw truth, and where silence isn���t a gap in communication, but a declaration.

It was May 9, 2025, and spring in Burnaby had dressed the 間眅埶AV campus in its finest, blush-pink blossoms waved in the breeze like gentle welcomes. I stepped into the morning panels with butterflies in my stomach and stories pressing at my chest. The theme, ���Incommunicative: Failure, Refusal, Resistance���, did not just reflect my research; it echoed my own feelings as a woman, African scholar, and journalist-in-recovery from burnout.

I was part of the ���Control and Crisis��� panel (Room K8652), chaired by Laya Behbahani, and the presentations before mine were gripping:

• Kayli Jamieson explored the biopolitics of Long COVID.
• Ana Contreras exposed the chilling reality of feminicide in Mexico.
• Ekaterina Letunovskaya unpacked the unspoken trauma of domestic migrant workers in Lebanon.

Then it was my turn.

My presentation, ���When Silence Speaks Louder: Kenyan Women Journalists��� Tactical Retreat from Digital Violence���, was more than research. It was the stitching together of fear, strength, and resistance in the lives of women whose stories are too often swallowed by online toxicity and state silence.

The Story Behind the Slides

Kenya, like many countries, is grappling with the dark underbelly of digital visibility. 7 out of 10 women journalists in Kenya report online harassment. What makes it even more dangerous is that these are not just random insults, they are coordinated attacks designed to intimidate, discredit, and ultimately silence.

Some of these women face doxxing, where private information is maliciously shared online. Others experience tribalized chauvinism, ethnic slurs, accusations of betrayal, especially when challenging political narratives. One woman journalist told me: ���I didn���t choose silence. It was forced on me. But silence can be its own kind of resistance.���

I shared case studies that still haunt me.

There is Purity Mwambia, an investigative journalist who exposed corrupt police renting firearms to criminals. After surviving online harassment and real-world stalking, she was forced into exile in the U.S., unsupported, unheard, almost forgotten.

And then there is Yvonne Okwara, a prime-time anchor vilified for ���questioning a certain tribe��� yet she was doing her work interviewing a senator about corruption allegations. She had to restrict comments on Instagram and limit Twitter replies to verified followers. When young journalists ask her for advice, they request ���safe beats���, avoiding politics altogether. It is a quiet loss for journalism and for truth.

���They want us to either quit or become numb. I refuse both,��� said Yvonne Okwara.

I could see the weight of their stories land in the room. The audience wasn���t just listening, they were feeling. And when the applause came, it wasn���t loud or performative. It was thoughtful. Reverent. Later, one participant came to me and said, ���I never thought silence could be so political.���

Beyond the Panel

Other morning panels were running simultaneously across campus, from ���Labour and Affective Desires��� (chaired by Dr. Cait McKinney) and ���Ideology and Entertainment��� (chaired by Anthony Burton) tackled everything from imposter syndrome to platform capitalism. Gloria Ye Jin Moon���s shared about ���The Sound of our Neuroqueer Voice,��� Alan R繹pke explained ���The Entertainment-Dividual-Self: On Intensity, Alienation, and Control��� while Jiayi Wang���s analysis of Bilibili in China reminded us how youth culture becomes political terrain.

In the afternoon, ���Technological Mediation��� session took center stage chaired by Dr. Stephanie Dick, where Denise Toor���s work on AI-generated gendered violence felt eerily close to my own findings. Ciaran Irwin challenged us to rethink attention economies in ���Escaping the Digital Skinner Box,��� proposing localized, inclusive alternatives that embrace uncertainty and difference. At the ���Popular Narratives of Representation��� panel, Mallory Mariano cracked open #BookTok���s seductive but problematic visibility politics. Noelle Gesner focused on Television Media as a Means for Approaching Narratives of Sexual Violence

Each panel was a reminder that communication is not always verbal, and that silence, visuals, absence, and refusal are equally powerful.

The conference had two brilliant keynotes. Dr. Shannon Leddy asked us to reimagine refusal in a decolonial context, how stepping back, or saying ���no,��� is not apathy but radical care. And in the afternoon, Dr. Jon Corbett led us through an embodied, visual storytelling experience grounded in Indigenous worldviews. His session reminded me: Not every story needs words to be heard.

As the day faded into soft twilight and the post-conference social buzzed with joy and exhaustion, I found myself standing outside the venue, watching students laugh and share notes. I thought about the women in my research, those still fighting, still hiding, still hoping to be heard.

CONDUITS 2025 did not just give me a platform, it gave me a deeper vocabulary. For grief. For courage. For resistance.

And it reminded me, in a very real way, that ���refusal��� doesn���t mean retreat. Sometimes, it���s how we move forward.

As the curtains closed on CONDUITS 2025 this quote stayed with me, ���Silence is not the absence of speech, it is the presence of strategy.���

楚紳餃莽���

Full photo gallery of CONDUITS 2025 available here >>>