Tik Tok, Telegram and pro-democracy protests: a study of Belarus and Russia in 2020-2021

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This research will apply a multi-disciplinary methodology to analyse the activities, functions, and mechanisms of digital activism performed on Telegram and TikTok around protests in authoritarian regimes, framing as case studies the 2020-2021 protests in Belarus and Russia. It will contribute to social movements literature by building the case for Telegram- and TikTok-enabled pro-democratic protests as unique tools for mobilization and coordination of protest actions and the popularization of pro-democratic movements. It will seek to evidence how the tremendous growth in usage of TikTok and Telegram in Belarus and Russia represents a shift in how social media platforms were used at a time of protest, and how the authorities were forced to respond to this. Despite the emergence of Telegram and TikTok as popular platforms for digital activism, there are few studies that use empirical data to gain insight into how and why these are used, particularly in Eastern Europe. This project addresses this gap and seeks to design a theoretical and methodological framework to conceptualize the Belarus and Russia protests situated within the digital activism literature.