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

这项研究将应用多学科方法来分析Telegram和TikTok上围绕威权政权抗议活动开展的数字激进主义的活动、功能和机制，并以2020-2021年白俄罗斯和俄罗斯的抗议活动为例进行研究。它将通过支持Telegram和TikTok的亲民主抗议作为动员和协调抗议行动和普及亲民主运动的独特工具，为社会运动文献作出贡献。它将寻求证据，证明TikTok和Telegram在白俄罗斯和俄罗斯的使用量大幅增长，如何表明在抗议期间社交媒体平台的使用方式发生了变化，以及当局是如何被迫对此做出回应的。尽管Telegram和TikTok成为流行的数字激进主义平台，但很少有研究使用实证数据来洞察这些平台是如何被使用以及为什么被使用的，特别是在东欧。该项目解决了这一差距，并试图设计一个理论和方法框架，将数字激进主义文献中的白俄罗斯和俄罗斯抗议活动概念化。

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.