TikTok political participation supporting Alexey Navalny during the Covid-19 pandemic in Russia

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 and ensuing lockdown increased the popularity of TikTok among Russian people, who in January 2021 transformed it into a space for political expression, following the arrest of opposition politician Alexey Navalny. This chapter explores the state of participatory politics on Russian TikTok from the arrest and the subsequent nationwide demonstrations in Navalny’s support. The research data includes 200 most popular TikTok videos with #navalnylive and #23january that were largely used by Navalny’s supporters. The videos’ content was analyzed and assigned to one of the five core practices of participatory politics (investigation, dialogue and feedback, circulation, production, and distribution). The results revealed that despite being engaging in all five practices, the majority of people participated in the circulation of information, thus supporting Navalny without voicing their opinions directly.