William H. Dutton and Lisa Chernenko

The arrest of Telegram’s founder, Pavel Durov, has generated a raft of commentaries, generally attacking Durov, Telegram’s moderation policies and its role in Russia. It has been characterized as a ‘platform for the Kremlin to convey its narrative of the war to ordinary Russians’ (Murphy & Klasa 2024; Foy et al 2024; Sauer 2024: 25; Stokel-Walker 2024). The critics focus on the role of Telegram in everything from spreading Russian propaganda, to putting children at risk of online harms, to underreporting its user count to Brussels (Foy et al 2024). But the critics ignore an important – perhaps counter-intuitive, fact: this platform plays a central role in how the people of Ukraine get access to trusted information.

Most internet users in the US and Western Europe are not familiar with Telegram. In addition to the standard functions of other messaging applications, Telegram allows any user to create a public or private ‘channel’ at no cost and without requiring specialised knowledge of the internet or social media. The channels provide the tools that allow the channel’s administrators to share updates with their subscribers in real time in ways that combine the ease of content creation and sharing of social media with the targeted focus of a newsletter to those subscribing to their channel.

Networked individuals rely on reading ‘feeds’ of the channels they are subscribed to, which creates a personalized and controlled information diet. In fact, it is quite hard to find a channel on a specific topic on Telegram unless you know the name of the channel on which it appears. So, the way people find channels is highly networked, based on recommendations, shares and trusted sources that one uses outside of Telegram.

The critics maintain that the Kremlin uses Telegram to convey its narrative, but Russia uses many platforms across news media, broadcasters, and social media in and outside of Russia to spread its narrative. Moreover, Telegram is not censored or controlled by the government of Russia. Most other popular global social networking platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Signal, have refused to comply with Russian ICT related laws and were blocked by the government. However, VK as well as other platforms owned by the Mail.ru Group do follow the Russian government’s line. Attempts of Russian officials to block Telegram proved difficult to implement, when it was attempted from 2018-20.

The most important point is that Telegram is a valuable platform for ordinary Ukrainians to get information about the war and politics. There is strong evidence for this claim.

Early this month (August 2024), with our colleagues, we surveyed 2,014 people living in Ukraine.[i] The project, through support from UNESCO and the government of Japan to the Portulans Institute in Washington DC, asked how the public in Ukraine gets information they can trust about the war and politics. It is focused on media literacy and access to trusted information during the war in Ukraine.[1]

A initial report on our findings is in progress, but given the many problematic news commentaries on Telegram, it seemed imperative for us to share one simple and clear finding that might surprise many pundits. That is: Telegram is one of the most trusted online platforms for Ukrainians and of real value during the Russian-Ukraine War. Across our sample of 2,014 adults in Ukraine, 84 percent have an account on Telegram, nearly half (47%) say they trust Telegram as a source of information ‘mostly or completely’ in the context of the war (high in comparison with many other sources), and three-fourths (75%) of Ukrainians get news daily or more than daily on Telegram or Viber, two of the most popular online sites.

Our survey also asked where individuals would ‘go first’ for information on different topics. Telegram was the preferred first source of information for many Ukrainains:  27 percent would use it first for information about politics and the war, 24 percent for information relevant to local neighbourhood or community issues, and 8 percent for information about public officials. The only information source that got a larger share than Telegram in this question is online search (on all three types of information, online search is the top choice) along with ‘official government sources’, which was the second preferred choice for information on public officials.

To better understand this relatively high level of trust and utilization of Telegram, it is also important emphasize, as noted above, that one of the other most trusted sources of information in Ukraine is the use of online search. In short, using online search along with a platform like Telegram enables networked individuals in Ukraine to get access to information they can trust – largely because they can source the information themselves.

This pattern in Ukraine is not unique. Similar patterns of findings have been found across Western liberal democracies where online search has enabled networked individuals to source and create and network with others online in ways that empower these individuals (Dutton et al 2017). The way networked individuals can subscribe to a set of Telegram channels they find useful similarly enables individuals to source their own information in ways that provide them more informational and communicative power vis-à-vis other individuals and institutions. This is what has been called the power shift of the digital age – the rise of Fifth Estate (Dutton 2023). 

The courts, politicians, pundits, and academics have become immediate cheerleaders for the detention of Pavel Durov in France (Klasa and Murphy 2024; Stokel-Walker 2024). However, they must not realise that Telegram is a critical source of trusted information for Ukrainians as well as many Russians.

For users in Russia, in particular, Telegram has become the last widely used platforms with a substantial audience providing access to alternative sources of information, which would otherwise require a VPN now that YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram are largely unavailable in the country. (YouTube is not blocked officially, as yet, like Facebook and Instagram are, but is being significantly slowed down in Russia.) Telegram is one of the only points of access to alternative sources of information outside of Russia.

Durov was an early entrepreneur in Russia when at 27-years of age he founded VKontakte (now VK), a virtual copy of FaceBook. Later, in founding Telegram, he developed one of the only social media sites that the Kremlin has not closed or censured since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, despite attempts to do so. This is in part because it gave Russia a channel to the West to promote its narrative. Of course, its narrative is well-known as it is repeated and well covered by all major media.

While Telegram is very international with close to one billion (over 900 million) users around the world, it is different from VK, which is more national, and more sensitive to block or censor, given its international reach. However, it is not prominent in the West, which makes the EU’s intervention somewhat odd. Moreover, Durov is not trusted in Ukraine, even though he has taken several pro-Ukrainian actions, such as by not handing the names of a VK group dedicated to the Euromaidan protest movement to the Russian government in 2014.[ii]

Much more could be said about Durov and Telegram in relation to Russia and Ukraine, but it would divert attention from the basic point that Telegram is of real value to Ukraine and its role should be protected, not undermined by however well-intentioned critics of its founder.

Arguably, one lesson from our findings could be that censorship of internet and social media platforms will undermine their credibility. In fact, Telegram seems to be the last platform available freely in Ukraine during the war which does not ban or moderate content from pro-Kremlin actors, while also giving voice to many other actors.

Many networked individuals do not trust governments and platforms to determine the truth. Most networked individuals are not populists, but they trust themselves to be capable of sourcing their information from multiple media, even though the press and other institutions often distrust the public’s judgement. But our study will also show how savvy Ukrainians seem to be in sourcing information, given that the war seems to have focused their minds on sorting out propaganda and disinformation from real information, just as they focus on ways to remain safe from Russian missiles and drones.

Unfortunately, the press, public intellectuals, and governments often fail to trust their own readers, audiences, and citizens. In this case, punishing Telegram is likely to have negative consequences for Ukraine. We fully understand the growing complexity of the issues surrounding platform governance and online safety, but the present attacks on Telegram are likely to harm the people of Ukraine by making it more difficult for them to access trusted information. Arguably, the same regulations, laws and policies that seek to address online harms in general are very likely, as in this case, to undermine trust in the internet and social media around the world – which will be an even greater harm.

As noted above, a full range of findings of our Portulans project, supported by UNESCO and the government of Japan, on access to information is in progress. I hope you follow our empirical findings, rather than more politically deterministic projections that fail to appreciate the positive role this platform has played in such a horrific war.

[Please note that the views (as distinct from the data) expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any of the institutions with which we are affiliated.]

References

Dutton, W. H. (2023), The Fifth Estate: The Power Shift of the Digital Age. New York: Oxford University Press.

Dutton, W. H., Reisdorf, B. C., Dubois, E., and Blank, G. (2017), ‘Search and Politics: The Uses and Impacts of Search in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the United States’, Quello Center Working Paper No. 5-1-17. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Telecommunication Policy Research Conference (TPRC), held at George Mason University, September 8 & 9. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2960697

Foy, H., Hancock, A., and Tamma, P., and Klasa, A. (2024), Brussels probe into breach of digital rules adds to pressure on Telegram’, The Financial Times, 29 August: p. 1.

Klasa, A., and Murphy, H. (2024), Macron hits back at Russian claim that Telegram boss’s detention was political’, The Financial Times, 27 August, p. 1.

Murphy, H., and Klasa, A. (2024), Telegram chief’s hands-off approach catches up with him’, The Financial Times, 29 August: p. 8.

Sauer, P. (2024), ‘Durov arrest poses threat across political spectrum’, The Guardian, 28 August, p. 25. Stokel-Walker, C. (2024), The arrest of Telegram’s CEO is a warning to tech overloads’, The Guardian, 27 August

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[1] Information about the project can be found at: https://portulansinstitute.org/case-studies/ or the GCSCC at the University of Oxford at: https://gcscc.ox.ac.uk/ukraine-case-studies

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[i] The survey was administered by Rating Group in Ukraine, reaching 75 percent of the country during the war through their mobile phone numbers.

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VK_(service)