Care or control in times of crisis? Gendered identity narratives and democratic resilience in digital public sphere

Crises intensify struggles over collective identity, as political actors compete to define who “we” are under uncertainty, within digital environments where algorithms shape which narratives gain visibility. While existing research shows how exclusionary identity narratives align with platform logics and contribute to democratic backsliding, less is known about how inclusive narratives that might sustain democratic resilience perform in the same settings. This article argues that democratic resilience depends on whether narratives that transform uncertainty into solidarity grounded in shared vulnerability can gain traction in the digital public sphere. Drawing on relational sociology, feminist political theory, and digital communication, it distinguishes between exclusionary identity control narratives and inclusive identity care narratives. To examine their relative performance, the study analyses 13,866 Facebook posts from Spain and Italy (2019–2021), using the COVID-19 pandemic as a quasi-natural experiment and scaling qualitative coding of identity narratives through a large language model to compare engagement patterns. The findings show that control narratives have an inherent engagement advantage across crisis periods and national contexts. However, care narratives significantly exceed their own baseline engagement during the crisis, indicating increased audience receptivity to messages of care under conditions of social vulnerability. These results shift analytical attention what erodes democracy to the narrative construction that may sustain it, highlighting the contingent potential of inclusive identity politics in digital public spheres.