Broadcasting Messages via Telegram: Pro-Government Social Media Control During the 2020 Protests in Belarus and 2022 Anti-War Protests in Russia

ABSTRACT

What is the role of digital media in contentious politics? On the one hand, digital media plays a central role in informing the public and organizing political movements. On the other hand, it has become a valuable tool for digital repression in authoritarian states. This study concentrates on the patterns of digital media use by pro-government actors in times of nationwide protests in autocracies. It analyzes how pro-government actors establish control over political discourse and information flow online compared to pro-opposition and neutral actors. I argue that, following the increased use of social media by opposition actors during social movements, the state will seek to establish its presence online, attempt to reach larger audiences, and endeavor to frame political issues in a beneficial light to reinforce political control. I use the cases of the 2020–21 protests in Belarus and the 2022 anti-war protests in Russia and employ text-as-data computational methods to analyze communication patterns on public Telegram channels. The results show that pro-government channels in Belarus and Russia followed the protest paradigm and framed protests as illegal, unauthorized activities that cause chaos and disorder. The pro-opposition Telegram channels in Belarus reached a larger audience than pro-state or neutral channels. In contrast, pro-government and neutral channels in Russia dominated the Telegramsphere. These contrasting patterns of Telegram channel activity and popularity suggest that the Russian pro-government online actors are more sophisticated in controlling and manipulating the communication space than Belarusian pro-state actors.

KEYWORDS:

• Telegram
• digital control
• digital repression
• social movements
• text as data

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.23271638.v1.

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badge for Open Data. The data are openly accessible at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.23271638.v1.

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Daria Kuznetsova

Daria Kuznetsova is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on the political actors’ use of digital media and information communication technologies for contentious politics in authoritarian states.