Kuznetsova, D. (2025). Amplifying the regime: identifying coordinated activity of pro-government Telegram channels in Russia and Belarus. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2025.2540822
Summary
This paper examines how pro-government Telegram channels in Russia and Belarus operate not as independent actors but in apparent coordination to amplify regime-aligned narratives. Drawing on network analysis of message-forwarding patterns, the study identifies distinct clusters of channels that share content in ways suggestive of orchestrated amplification. Its central argument is that authoritarian information ecosystems exploit Telegram’s platform affordances — especially message forwarding — to structure and propagate state-aligned content, offering a window into computational propaganda and information control within post-Soviet authoritarian regimes.
Key Contributions
- Provides empirical evidence of coordinated pro-government activity on Telegram, a platform far less studied than Western mainstream social media.
- Extends the research agenda on coordinated inauthentic/coordinated information behavior into explicitly authoritarian contexts.
- Offers comparative insight into how Russian and Belarusian regime-aligned actors organize and amplify content online.
Methods
- Analysis of pro-government Telegram channels operating across Russia and Belarus.
- Identification of coordination through patterns of content sharing and message forwarding, using network-analytic techniques to surface clusters of jointly operating channels.
Findings
- Pro-government channels exhibit identifiable patterns of coordinated activity rather than acting independently.
- Distinct clusters of channels engage in synchronized information sharing.
- Coordination serves to amplify regime-aligned narratives, with comparable strategies observable in both the Russian and Belarusian contexts.
- Telegram’s forwarding affordance both enables and structures this coordinated amplification.
Connections
This paper contributes to the coordinated-behavior literature by porting network-based detection methods into an authoritarian, non-Western platform setting; its methodological lineage connects to work formalizing coordinated link-sharing and inauthentic amplification such as Giglietto2020-9d8acdd7, Giglietto2022-0e951ac5, and Giglietto2023-fa71a001. Its focus on protest and regime dynamics in the post-Soviet space resonates with Kulichkina2026-zk, while its network-analytic approach to detecting coordination aligns with broader detection efforts like Minici2024-tf and Luceri2025-tr.