Is Telegram a “harbinger of freedom”? The performance, practices, and perception of platforms as political actors in authoritarian states

This paper examines the practices, performance, and perceptions of messaging platform Telegram as an actor in 2020 Belarus protests, using publicly available data from Telegram’s public statements, protest-related groups, media coverage. Developing a novel conceptualization actorness, we critically assess role protests examine whether is seen playing active Belarusian contentious politics. We find that performance practices drive citizens to form affective connections perceive ally their struggle against repressions digital censorship. Meanwhile, state uses aversion censorship content moderation intervene politics by co-opting grassroots approaches mimicking manipulative efforts other authoritarian regimes. Our conceptual framework applicable post-Soviet contexts, but can also serve useful heuristic for analyzing actorness regime types.