Daria Kuznetsova—Amplifying the Regime: Identifying Coordinated Activity of Pro-Government Telegram Channels in Russia and Belarus

Amplifying the Regime: Identifying Coordinated Activity of Pro-Government Telegram Channels in Russia and Belarus

Today, autocracies widely use information communication technologies as tools for digital repression and information control online. I build on the framework of digital repression, and use principles of Russia’s disinformation dissemination and social network approaches to investigate the strategies that state and pro-government actors employ in digital communication spaces. Using a unique dataset, I investigate the activity of state and pro-government agents, in comparison to opposition and neutral actors, on the messaging app Telegram during the 2020-21 protests in Belarus and the 2022 anti-war protests in Russia. The results demonstrate that pro-government actors increase interconnectivity between their growing number of channels and become more consistent in how quickly they forward messages, suggesting a coordinated action. Such activities aim to increase the visibility—through forwarding and message multiplication—and acceptability—through the validity effect created by repeated exposure—of the information favorable to the regime and deny attention to opposition actors. The opposition actors in Belarus also demonstrate similar signs of coordination.

Speaker

Dr Daria Kuznetsova is a Lecturer in the School of Languages, Social and Political Sciences at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Her main research focuses on how political actors in authoritarian regimes use digital communication spaces to control, exploit, and manipulate information creation, dissemination, and consumption.