Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>As digital platforms become central arenas for political discourse and cultural production, their governance is increasingly shaped by national regulatory frameworks and state intervention. This article draws on the concept of platform nationalism to describe the convergence of nationalist governance, algorithmic moderation, and geopolitical platform policy, and examines how this convergence shapes the conditions under which content creators work in Turkey. While much of the literature on creator industries has centered on Western economies, this study foregrounds politically engaged creators operating under authoritarian conditions, where platform governance and state censorship intersect. Drawing on digital ethnography of TikTok in Turkey and semi-structured interviews with creators producing feminist, LGBTQ+, and dissident content, the analysis identifies a persistent gap between TikTok’s public claims of neutrality, authenticity, and community well-being and the lived experiences of creators, who report algorithmic suppression, inconsistent moderation, demonetization, and exclusion from brand partnerships. In response, creators adopt adaptive strategies, including coded language, humor, aesthetic reframing, and strategic ambiguity, that allow them to sustain expression while managing risk. The article argues that platform nationalism regulates not just speech but livelihood, producing a doubled precarity in which political vulnerability and economic instability feed on each other. By centering perspectives from outside the Global North, the study contributes a framework for analyzing how global platforms adapt to national political environments in ways that reproduce existing inequalities within the creator economy.</p>