Stateless nations political presence in digital era: A comparison of Palestine, Kurdish and Uyghur Muslim

Abstract

The digital connectivity and crackdowns from authoritarian governments, stateless nations have adapted by making networked platforms critical spaces for political visibility, cultural survival and collective remembrance. This study investigates how three marginalized communities, Kurds, Uyghur Muslims and Palestinians, construct political visibility and sustain digital resistance across major social media environments between 2020 and 2024. Guided by Networked Public Sphere Theory and Connective Action Theory, the research uses these frameworks as a combined analytical lens. The population for this study consists of the platforms themselves (X/Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Telegram and YouTube), while the sample includes publicly accessible posts, hashtags, testimony videos, symbolic imagery and protest materials circulating across these spaces. Through comparative, cross platform qualitative content analysis, material was systematically coded for narrative motifs, mobilisation techniques, audience engagement, and indicators of censorship or algorithmic constraint. This analysis reveals clear digital mediation strategies of struggle: Kurds reconstruct silenced histories through aesthetic narrativization; Uyghur narratives are articulated through diaspora voices and external solidarities seeking to visibility contestation; and Palestinians achieve unsurpassed global engagement despite crippling digital censorship. In all cases we find state monitoring, content removals, algorithmic suppression, and geopolitical platform discrimination to be systemic limitations that are shaping the affordances of online expression.