Performing Algorithmic Masculinity: AI and Disinformation in Turkey and North Macedonia's Online Forums

This paper examines how authoritarian surveillance intersects with AI-mediated disinformation and digital masculinity in Türkiye and North Macedonia. Both countries experienced major surveillance scandals that damaged institutional trust: Türkiye's 2013-2014 Gezi-era wiretapping and North Macedonia's 2015 revelation of 20,000+ citizens surveilled. However, these legacies manifested differently in platform-era disinformation, shaped by divergent state capacities, regime trajectories, and gendered discourses of technological authority. North Macedonia's post-Yugoslav transition left it without the centralized information control infrastructure that Turkey maintained. This asymmetry in digital governance capacity created unmanaged vulnerability, enabling economic actors (the 2016 Veles fake news industry) and foreign interference (Russian campaigns during the 2018 referendum) to exploit platform architectures. In contrast, Türkiye's stronger state capacity enabled managed manipulation, leading the government to develop centralized AI governance and mobilize masculinized narratives of digital sovereignty to control information ecosystems. For example, Türkiye's 2021-2025 National AI Strategy frames artificial intelligence as a tool of national control, emphasizing protectionist, paternalistic rhetoric that echoes traditional masculine roles. The establishment of the Misinformation Office in 2022 and efforts to build a "national chatbot" (e.g., Kumru, 2025) also illustrate how AI becomes embedded in gendered state authority narratives. North Macedonia, lacking such capacity, left disinformation responses primarily to civil society organizations. This study employs a mixed-methods comparative design analyzing approximately 500-1000 forum posts from Turkish health and AI discussions (Ekşi Sözlük) and 300-500 posts from Macedonian online communities (Macedonian Truth Forum). I use computational text analysis (topic modeling (BERTopic) and sentiment analysis) to identify patterns in how digital masculinity engages with scientific and AI authority. This computational analysis is supplemented by a critical discourse analysis of representative threads, examining gendered language and authority claims. Additionally, I conduct policy document analysis of national AI strategies, misinformation governance frameworks, and state AI initiatives in both countries. In Macedonia, the collapse of trust following the surveillance scandal enables diverse masculine performances, from Veles entrepreneurs exploiting algorithmic systems for profit to anti-establishment rhetoric positioning all expertise (including AI) as elite manipulation. AI discourse operates differently as Türkiye frames AI as a masculine national sovereignty tool requiring protection and development, while Macedonia treats AI with the same generalized distrust applied to all institutions following the surveillance trauma. Health misinformation, particularly COVID-19 discourse, becomes a terrain for performing masculine rationality, with Turkish forums emphasizing nationalist protection narratives while Macedonian forums express broader institutional abandonment. I argue that authoritarian surveillance legacies shape not only platform vulnerabilities but also how gendered communities engage with AI technologies and scientific authority, contributing to digital authoritarianism scholarship with implications for understanding platform governance, AI policy, and democratic backsliding across the Global South and East.