Between Risk and Reach: Gender-Based Barriers to Feminist Political Influencers Among Russian Youth Under Authoritarianism

Although the scholarship on political influencers has been expanding, it has predominantly concentrated on topics such as right-wing online groups, troll farms used by authoritarian regimes, and the manosphere community. Far less attention has been paid to left-wing, feminist, and pro-democratic political influencers, especially in authoritarian settings. This study addresses this gap by examining how young Russian political influencers navigate between their commitment to engaging publicly with pressing social and political issues and the risk of state surveillance and punishment. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the so-called reversed gender gap in online activism has been detected in Russia, which indicates that women are somewhat more prone to participation in digital political activism. In order to explore this seeming paradox and broaden the scholarship on political influencers, this study draws on 25 interviews with women between the ages of 18 and 30, residing inside and outside of Russia, who discuss political issues on their social media accounts. The collected data reveals several major results. First, it shows the strategic logic of calibrated visibility utilized by the influencers as they control their audience segmentation, migrate between different platforms, and employ coded language. This allows them to avoid triggering punitive state responses, though not always successfully. Second, the study also displays the difference in challenges that influencers face depending on their location. Influencers inside Russia are forced to engage in stricter risk assessment, but have the benefit of greater perceived authenticity among the domestic audience, which is particularly crucial under Russian authoritarianism marked by fundamental distrust towards elites and institutions. In contrast, political influencers abroad are in contradictory positions – they enjoy greater safety to speak out and have easier access to all social media platforms, but experience diminished perceived authenticity among domestic followers, which is critical, especially for micro-influencers, who build their lasting relationship with the audience on the basis of relatability and credibility. The third key contribution of this study is the evidence of gendered repression as a central part of the barriers that affect their activity online. Trolling, doxing, sexual harassment, and misogynistic backlash become part of the routine censorship mechanisms of silencing that affect their communicative strategies and self-identification. By focusing on young female political influencers, this study contributes to the broader debate on the political influencers’ ecosystems, their role in authoritarian environments, and shifts the focus from predominantly studied right-wing digital spaces. It also illuminates the affective, emotional, and epistemic labour that is required to conduct pro-democratic and pro-liberal communication in authoritarian settings. And finally, it informs the scholarship on transnational activism and migrants’ social remittances.