Project title

Only stories left. How authoritarianism decrease the space for public discussion and private opinions on social media

Research question

How does authoritarian pressure change everyday digital self-expression and public discussion on social media in Belarus?

Project description

Ganka Valynets’ fellowship project explores how people in Belarus cope with increasing pressure and repression in their everyday digital lives. Social media platforms that once served as spaces for everyday communication, self-expression, and public discussion have gradually become more restricted, particularly after 2020. Criminal cases related to comments, likes, emojis, subscriptions, and other online interactions have changed not only political communication, but also ordinary online behaviour.

The project examines how people manage visibility and risk under these conditions, and where their everyday experiences move when they are no longer openly expressed online. Many users delete posts, stop updating accounts for years, switch platforms, rely only on temporary content such as stories, hide behind empty profiles or coded names, or leave social media entirely.

Through digital ethnography and in-depth interviews, the research will observe patterns such as silence, platform switching, coded expression, deleted content, and other strategies people use to create distance between themselves and potential danger.

Drawing on international parallels and Jean Baudrillard’s concept of simulation, the project will explore how social media, once perceived as a projection of reality, can become a space of careful performance and, at times, apparent emptiness.

Selected publications