Misinformation and Trusted News on Fringe Platforms: Telegram Propaganda (Pre-Recorded)

• In Event: Disinformation Across Platforms and Contexts

Abstract

Messaging services have relatively little content moderation or other restrictions on content producers. As such, messengers could appear to be online spaces where misinformation and hate speech prevail. To date, there is little research to measure the scale of misinformation and understand how it spreads on these platforms. Although often described as ‘fringe’ they can have huge user bases (Telegram, which is studied here, has more users than Twitter).

We used an open-access Telegram dataset to analyze 7.7 million messages sent to 17,851 public channels of this messaging platform that contained hyperlinks to any website to compare the reach and spread of misleading and trusted mainstream news information that is prominent in the U.S. We also studied the mechanisms through which information finds its audiences on Telegram.

We identified three key mechanisms of spreading misinformation and growing audiences on this messenger, which point out the presence of misinformation campaigning efforts on Telegram. We argue that despite much more relaxed moderation policy of Telegram found that information from trusted news prevails on this platform; however, the audience of misleading sources is more engaged and loyal. This study is one of the first attempts to investigate the spread of news content on messengers. It speaks to the concerns about the role of fringe platforms in the information environment.

Authors

• Aliaksandr Herasimenka, University of Oxford

• Aleksi Knuutila, Oxford Internet Institute

• Jonathan Bright, University of Oxford

• Philip N. Howard, Oxford University