Confessional narratives in digital self- and life-writing of bisexual activists in Russia: A case study of bisexual identity building

Abstract

This article focuses on digital self- and life-writing as a tool of online activism. Drawing on case studies of social media activism for bisexual rights in contemporary Russia, the article explores the ways in which the media genre of confessional narrative is employed by activists for constructing a shared bisexual identity in the process of self-mediation through social media platforms. Applying digital ethnography and interpretive content analysis methods, the paper presents a content analysis of video, textual and visual texts created by bisexual rights activists based in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Ekaterinburg, Perm' and Vladivostok, and published on social media platforms (YouTube, Telegram, Facebook) in 2020 and 2021.