Protesters against the Putin-regime and pro-Navalny use the #FreeNavalny-banderoll. Photo: Free Navlny

Protesters against the Putin-regime and pro-Navalny use the #FreeNavalny-banderoll. Photo: Free Navlny

Peer-reviewed articles TIKTOK and TELEGRAM as platforms for political mobilization in Belarus and Russia

Over the past decade, social networking platforms have become an important communication channel for protesters in autocratic countries. In August 2020 and January 2021, the messaging application Telegram and social media platform Tik-Tok became platforms for protest mobilization and coordination in Belarus and Russia respectively. This article applies previous research within social movements and democratization studies about the use of Facebook and Twitter to instigate and galvanize protests in autocratic countries in order to explore how protest mobilization on newly politicized platforms such as Telegram and TikTok is manifested. For this purpose, we conducted a qualitative content analysis of 1,128 protest-related publications (posts) on Telegram’s channel NextaLive and 100 videos on TikTok. The conclusion provides an extended framework for analyzing political mobilization online and argues that social networking platforms can themselves be considered spaces that are commensurate with those of offline protest and not merely tools to stimulate democratic participation.

Published in the printed edition of Baltic Worlds BW 2024:4, pages 67-80
Published on balticworlds.com on December 10, 2024

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abstract

Over the past decade, social networking platforms have become an important communication channel for protesters in autocratic countries. In August 2020 and January 2021, the messaging application Telegram and social media platform Tik-Tok became platforms for protest mobilization and coordination in Belarus and Russia respectively. This article applies previous research within social movements and democratization studies about the use of Facebook and Twitter to instigate and galvanize protests in autocratic countries in order to explore how protest mobilization on newly politicized platforms such as Telegram and TikTok is manifested. For this purpose, we conducted a qualitative content analysis of 1,128 protest-related publications (posts) on Telegram’s channel NextaLive and 100 videos on TikTok. The conclusion provides an extended framework for analyzing political mobilization online and argues that social networking platforms can themselves be considered spaces that are commensurate with those of offline protest and not merely tools to stimulate democratic participation.

KEYWORDS: protests, mobilization, Belarus, Russia, Telegram, TikTok.

Read the full article as pdf. Download for free “article as pdf”: upper corner to the right.

Alesia Rudnik and Malin Rönnblom

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