Community Girlblogging to Save The Internet was a workshop with Irma Mastenbroek that empowered girls by providing basic knowledge to code websites.

The workshop Community Girlblogging to Save The Internet explored how collaborative coding of HTML+CSS web pages can help to gain independence from Big Tech, and can rebuild a sense of community. The workshop raised awareness of the importance of coding, and offered direct knowledge of the importance of educating and empowering girls and women into the basics of coding. It demystified the profession of making websites though fun activities. It encouraged participants to do this with physical materials as a means to overcome the fear of technology that some might have. By going back to source code (using only HTML & CSS – the building blocks of the web), it also reinvented the lost practice of ‘girl blogging’.

No coding skills were required to take part in this workshop; it was even possible to design one’s own personal webpages on paper. Participants were invited to bring their own laptop or tablet, crafty materials, old magazines and prints, and fuzzy fabrics and cute things like glitter if they liked.

Irma Mastenbroek (NL/DE) is a Berlin-based digital rights activist and techno-feminist. She has a background in mathematics with a focus on network science, AI, and data feminism.

Part of Re-Imagine Europe: New Perspectives for Action. Co-funded by the European Union.