Low(er) visibility as a political resource. Italian feminist content creators and strategic multiplatform visibility management

<title>Abstract</title> <p>What happens when visibility is mobilized for political rather than commercial purposes, and can lower visibility itself function as a political resource? This paper addresses these questions through the case of Italian feminist content creators (FCCs), who occupy a hybrid position between digital content creators, activists, and public educators. Rather than assuming that greater visibility is always preferable, the study asks how, and for what purposes, these creators distribute their political communication across platforms characterized by different degrees of visibility, introducing the concept of strategic multiplatform visibility management. Drawing on a year of digital ethnography and reflexive thematic analysis of seven Italian feminist content creators who combine a prominent Instagram presence with an actively maintained Substack newsletter, the study examines Instagram posts, newsletter issues, and About pages as traces of broader communicative practice. The findings show that lower-visibility spaces and practices are not secondary or residual, but politically meaningful environments: they support argumentative depth, community building, and economic sustainability, while affording creators a perceived freedom from Instagram's format constraints, algorithmic governance, and performative pressures. Over half of the creators examined describe some form of withdrawal from Instagram, driven by unresponsive platform governance, harassment, or an unsustainable pace of content production, yet in every case their public presence continues through this lower-visibility infrastructure. The paper argues that, for these creators, political agency rests not on maximizing visibility but on strategically managing its degree, form, and audience, shifting analytical attention from visibility accumulation to visibility management as a form of political agency.</p>