Interlopers by choice, or interlopers by circumstance? Alexey Navalny and alternative journalistic projects in contemporary autocratic Russia

In February 2024, Russian opposition activist Alexey Navalny died in a Western Siberian prison aged just 47. Known as a vocal opposition leader in Russia in the 2010s, he was regularly trying to be elected but also organised the largest mass anti-establishment and anti-corruption protests in Russia before his untimely death. Deprived of access and coverage in the Russian mainstream media, Navalny and his associates established their own media channels, including personal YouTube channels and online media outlets such as Navalny LIVE to avoid censorship and expose the corruption and abuses of power of high-ranking officials in Russia. However, at the same time, Navalny and his colleagues cannot be labelled as ‘journalists’ in a normative sense. They were not professional journalists and had not gone through the processes of journalistic socialisation, but rather ‘tried on’ journalistic roles and investigative journalism practices to expose corrupt elites. In this sense, Navalny and his team can be called (explicit) interlopers who adopt journalistic identities and force a reconsideration of what journalists are and journalism is. In this study, we look at the case of Navalny and his team and their investigative documentaries on YouTube. We relate his practice to the journalistic concept of (explicit) interlopers, analyse how their unique and alternative journalistic project has diversified a largely monopolised and authoritarian Russian public sphere, and propose extending the notion of interlopers by differentiating between interlopers by choice, and interlopers by circumstance.