Russian military bloggers: Corpus and dataset of collected posts, 2022–2023

TL;DR

This paper presents a dataset of Russian military bloggers' posts on Telegram from 2022–2023, offering insights into public sentiment and information dynamics during the Ukraine war.

Contribution

The novel contribution is the collection and analysis of a corpus of Russian military bloggers' content and audience reactions on Telegram.

Findings

Telegram channels of Russian military bloggers serve as a key component of the Russian information sphere.

The dataset captures war-related content and audience reactions, offering insights into public sentiment and influence operations.

The dataset supports modeling of public opinion dynamics in digital warfare contexts.

Abstract

The ongoing war in Ukraine has generated unprecedented volumes of digital data across multiple domains, from weapons effectiveness and battlefield casualties to military communications and economic impacts. This digitalization of warfare has created new opportunities for computational social science research, paralleling the broader trend of increasing digital traces in human activities. Our study focuses on the communications and subsequent reactions within Russian military bloggers' (``milbloggers'') Telegram channels, specifically examining their war-related content in the original Russian langiage.

These communications have emerged as a crucial component of the Russian information sphere, potentially influencing war policy and political decision-making. Telegram's perceived security features, including robust encryption and privacy protocols, have made it a preferred platform for such discourse. The Russian leadership has strategically utilized milbloggers' posts and their audience reactions as both a barometer of public sentiment and a tool for shaping public opinion regarding the conflict's developments.

While quantifying the effectiveness of these influence operations remains challenging due to data limitations, our analysis concentrates on the observable ``input'' - the milbloggers' posts and their associated reactions. This dataset provides valuable insights into the ongoing conflict and serves as a foundation for modeling public opinion dynamics and sentiment evolution in digital warfare contexts.

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