By Alessia Maira (Culture, Society & Security Desk) & Giulia Panfilo (Russia Desk)
Civil resistance in the 21st century
In 1994, Randle defined the 20th century as the time a new term entered the world vocabulary: People Power. In contrast to power by defence (the idea that power stems from violence and weaponry), power by people signifies the citizens' ability to fight dictatorships, repressive governments, and military regimes. When people come together to exercise power, this is rooted in voluntary collective cooperation and is called “civil resistance”. From the Latin words “civis” (citizen) and “resistere” (to stand up against something), civil resistance is a relatively recent phenomenon of non violent people-led collective action against the political or economic status quo: as a conflict, it mobilises people sharing collective political struggle with protests, demonstrations, even petitions or boycotts; yet, as an act of resistance, it distinguishes itself from warfare, guerrilla, or para-military action as it must reject violence. Civil resistance is also essentially non-institutional: while citizens may conduct actions through existing institutions, the very spirit of civil resistance depends on confronting them (the legal system, governments, or even major industries) often through disruptive tactics that challenge those same structures.
Still, the impact of civil resistance on dismantling oppressive systems remains debated. Does civil resistance truly stand a chance at creating lasting change? How much power do ordinary people hold in building peace compared to military forces or usual institutional peacebuilding actions? Researcher Abbs argues that its strength lies in its power to mobilise diverse groups across social backgrounds, genders, and generations, united around a shared purpose. He concludes that nonviolent movements have instead shaped negotiations and supported democratic transitions in numerous cases - in Europe, such movements include the fall of Communism in East Germany, the rise of the Solidarność movement in Poland, and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. On the characteristics and status of civil resistance, researcher Bartkowki lays down an incredible collection of “civil struggles” in his book, “Recovering Non-Violent History”, and argues that civil resistance is often kept in the shadow of history and is even deemed unpatriotic, ineffective, and even un-masculine: this very last point raises a question of gender. Is civil resistance seen as a weak version of political action? Why is this weakness, if any, frowned upon as “too feminine”?
The link to femininity is not new, as gender and civil resistance intersect on two levels: first, women’s significant yet underrecognised contributions to nonviolent movements; second, the way gendered perceptions of strength and legitimacy shape how such movements are publicly valued; and third, how gender affects the repression of civil resistance groups. Back to Randle, if the 20th century marked the age of civil resistance, the 21st has redefined it through the digital revolution, which offers new tools to challenge dominant institutions. Yet, the same online spaces that empower activism also enable mis/disinformation, smear campaigns, and digital harassment, often undermining both the legitimacy of civil resistance and the credibility of gender-based narratives.
Digital spaces as arenas of civil resistance
If civil resistance has historically relied on physical presence and collective action in shared offline spaces, its contemporary expressions increasingly take place in digital environments. Social media platforms, messaging applications, and online networks have allowed for the expansion of collective action, allowing for mobilisation, coordination, and visibility far beyond geographical constraints. In this sense, it can be argued that digital spaces do not replace traditional forms of resistance but extend them, allowing collective action to circulate virtually through images, testimonies, and narratives in real time.
However, these spaces of digital collective action and coordination are often deeply contested, criticised, and at the centre of ongoing debate. Digital platforms are now shaped by algorithms and commercial interests, which in turn influence whose voice gets promoted and whose voice gets marginalised. State and non-state actors are known for increasingly exploiting these algorithmic dynamics through coordinated information operations - one example being the widely documented interference in the 2016 US Elections, attributed to Russian-linked actors. Nowadays, as a consequence of how algorithms work for social media, visibility can be seen both as a resource and a liability. And while digital spaces may serve to amplify civil resistance and collective action, they also pose the risk of surveillance, repression, and counter-narratives, presenting new risks for the dynamics of contemporary civil resistance in digital spaces.
Gendered dimensions of digital resistance
Why a gendered perspective? Women’s mobilisation in collective actions has long been linked to a decline in violent campaigns. Between 1945 and 2014, nonviolent movements saw a growing presence of women on the frontlines. Studies show that women’s participation in collective action often encourages broader involvement, including among men. During the 2011 Egyptian revolution, activist Asmaa Mahfouz urged men to join the protests, framing her appeal as a call to “protect their women on the streets.” Yet this notion of protection served more as a strategic guise than a genuine vulnerability. In Pinochet’s Chile, women fought poverty through handmade arpilleras, embroidered tapestries that carried coded messages and were smuggled abroad to expose Chile’s internal repression. Similarly, in Argentina between the 1970s and 1980s, motherhood was used as a political shield: middle-aged women mothers to disappeared people (Los Desaparecidos) used their moral authority and presumed harmlessness to demand justice for their missing sons. They did not meet any military confrontation.
However, in this contemporary context, narratives are key in shaping how collective action is conducted, interpreted, legitimised or delegitimised by the wider public, institutions, and international audiences. Gender (and womanhood) could be played in a twisted way. With digital platforms expanding and authoritarian regimes tightening control, going online has become a means of survival rather than a choice, marking the 2010s as the decade of gendered transnational activism - the “hybrid world of activism.” In Germany, the AfD instrumentalises gender narratives to oppose immigration; In Turkey, state institutions twist equality discourses to reinforce women’s traditional roles, while in some Eastern European countries, especially Russia and Poland, debates on “family values” promote motherhood and exclude LGBTQ+ mobilisation. Across these cases, women’s equality is instrumentalised for political gain, their activism supported only within patriarchal, anti‑Western frames.
Information integrity under pressure
Access to accurate information is one of the cornerstones of democratic societies, enabling informed decisions and social cohesion. According to the United Nations, “Information integrity refers to an information ecosystem in which freedom of expression is fully enjoyed and information that is accurate, reliable, free from discrimination and hate is available to all in an open, inclusive, safe and secure information environment”. Information integrity, therefore, is not only a mere technical task of removing mis/disinformation, but a social condition in itself: the ability of societies to access, trust, and interpret information at any given time.
However, in modern times, mis/disinformation tactics are increasingly part of broader strategies of political contestation and civil resistance suppression. Rather than aiming to convince audiences of a single false narrative, these tactics often seek to cause confusion and overwhelm information environments through narrative flooding, selective amplification, and other false engagement tactics. In this context, attacks of this type are often aimed at specific groups online: seven in ten women report experiencing targeted abuse through online harassment, sexualised disinformation, credibility attacks, and other similar tactics. The architecture of digital platform algorithms often amplifies these dynamics, allowing misleading content to circulate rapidly, with consequences on collective sense-making and on the informational foundations upon which civil resistance lies.
Shaping something new, navigating old struggles
Civil resistance in the digital age is no longer confined to streets or institutions: it increasingly takes place in online spaces in the form of a struggle over meaning, visibility, and credibility. Digital spaces now amplify both the possibilities and the vulnerabilities of collective action, while narratives and algorithmic structure influence who is heard, seen, trusted, or silenced.
Civil resistance has the power to unite people across ages, classes, and genders. Gender - understood as the set of societal and political expectations embodied by women, men, and people of all genders - offers a particularly insightful lens through which to analyse civil resistance in the digital age. Whether mobilised as a strategic guise or as a moral shield under especially violent regimes, gendered performances of resistance have become increasingly visible as direct, on-the-ground confrontation is diminished or rendered impossible. This shift raises a crucial question: what are the advantages and risks of resisting online? Digital resistance is a double-edged sword. While it amplifies visibility and enables new forms of mobilisation, it also exposes activists to surveillance and gender-specific threats. Another risk is attracting dominant power narratives that seek to instrumentalise gender discourses for political gain. How, then, is this struggle narrated or delegitimised by dominant and oppositional actors across the world?
As digital information environments continue to evolve, understanding collective resistance as a struggle over meaning, visibility, and credibility is essential to grasp how power, participation and democracy are being reshaped in contemporary societies.