Differentiable characteristics of Telegram mediums during protests in Belarus 2020.

Abstract

Online activism has been pivotal for anti-government protests all around the world. A lot of existing research studies how people use social media to mobilize and coordinate protests. However, some platforms offer more than one kind of medium for communication, in particular, Telegram. We found that a lot of research literature focuses on either one or another medium or sometimes merges them together. In this research, we performed a comparative analysis of three communication mediums in this platform: channels, groups, and local chats during protests in Belarus in 2020. We first collected a dataset which follows six months of protest, which allows us to study the temporal variation of online activism. We find that in Telegram, these three modes of communication are not equally important. Furthermore, they are responsible for different types of communication. For example, in groups, people discuss significant protests that occurred nationwide. In comparison, people discuss local and small demonstrations and protests in chats. Finally, Telegram channels are very distinct from local chats and channels in terms of content. Our finding suggests that future research should consider these modes of the communication independently rather than blending them.