Digital Expertise Under Pressure: The Evolution of IT Professionals’ Roles in Belarus’s Contemporary Protest Movement

The mass protests that followed the 2020 presidential election in Belarus unfolded alongside extensive use of digital infrastructures under conditions of authoritarian repression. In particular, the moment saw a political activation of Belarus’s IT sector that had not been seen before. This paper explores how IT professionals contributed to protest and civil resistance through digital expertise, and how their roles evolved in response to changing sociopolitical conditions. Drawing on in-depth interviews with IT professionals involved in these efforts, we examine how participants mobilized technical expertise to build tools such as election verification systems and secure communication channels, and how they came to take on additional roles in knowledge brokerage and risk management. As the regime’s countermeasures evolved, so did IT expertise, moving from tool development to knowledge brokering and digital literacy promotion. Rather than viewing expertise as a static resource, our findings reveal it as dynamic and evolving, shaping how participants understood and enacted their own roles under conditions of repression. By documenting this evolution, we bridge previously disconnected research streams in CSCW, offering insights into how expertise functions in digitally-mediated protest movements.