Socio-political environments and their impact on the use of YouTube by LGBTQ+ activists in the post-Soviet region

While scholarship on post-Soviet activism, including those analyzing online activism in separate post-Soviet states, is rapidly growing, there is still a lack of systematic comparative research on online activism in the region. This gap is especially noticeable concerning the comparative analysis of online LGBT+ activism across post-Soviet states with different socio-political trajectories. This omission is striking because LGBTQ+ activists in the region have increasingly prioritized online engagement as the key mode of mobilizing supporters, promoting LGBT+ agenda, and publicizing instances and patterns of discrimination. The paper aims to fill in this gap by analyzing how LGBTQ+ activists employ YouTube videos depending on local socio-political environments in the post-Soviet region.  The analysis will focus on the cases of Estonia, Russia, and Ukraine. These countries present interesting cases for comparative examination of online LGBTQ+ activism. On the one hand, all three countries are impacted by the legacy of Soviet homophobia. On the other hand, these states’ radically different socio-political trajectories over the post-Soviet period have created very different opportunities and constraints for LGBTQ+ activists. They have also adopted different approaches to censorship and the freedom of online communication. The paper will examine the use of YouTube by LGBTQ+ Estonians, Russians, and Ukrainians and how its affected by social and political contexts through the prism of social movement theories and recent advances in political communication (strategic narrative approach).