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News loopholing: Telegram news as portable alternative media

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  • Ahmed Al-Rawi

    (Simon Fraser University)

Abstract

This paper deals with foreign state-run media outlets that disseminate Persian language news targeted to the Iranian public. More specifically, it focuses on the mobile news app Telegram by undertaking a content analysis of a sample of the top 400 most viewed stories across four channels, i.e., BBC Persian, Voice of America’s Persian language service VOA Farsi, Radio Farda, and Iran International television channel. It also offers a topic modelling of all news stories posted. Results show that most of the news coverage centered on politics, particularly with an emphasis on internal Iranian issues, while a few other channels repeatedly urged their followers to submit not only their email addresses and other private information, but also photographs and/or videos of anti-government protests. Conceptually, I consider these channels as portable alternative media, as opposed to state-run news media, since the Iranian public seeks them out as sources of political information that assist them in better understanding world news and, most importantly, news about their own country. The Telegram instant messaging app is related to the meso dimension of alternative media, meaning that it is characterized by the unique production and dissemination means it utilizes. This paper concludes by highlighting the implications of foreign state-run news outlets using news loopholing to disseminate information, while simultaneously collecting private information about their users and/or potentially risking their safety.

Suggested Citation

  • Ahmed Al-Rawi, 2022. "News loopholing: Telegram news as portable alternative media," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 949-968, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jcsosc:v:5:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s42001-021-00155-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s42001-021-00155-3
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. David Wilkinson & Mike Thelwall, 2012. "Trending Twitter topics in English: An international comparison," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(8), pages 1631-1646, August.
    2. Yalcintas, Altug & Alizadeh, Naseraddin, 2020. "Digital protectionism and national planning in the age of the internet: the case of Iran," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(4), pages 519-536, August.
    3. David Wilkinson & Mike Thelwall, 2012. "Trending Twitter topics in English: An international comparison," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(8), pages 1631-1646, August.
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    Cited by:

    1. Anton Oleinik, 2024. "Telegram channels covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: a comparative analysis of large multilingual corpora," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 361-384, April.
    2. Lynnette Hui Xian Ng & Ian Kloo & Samantha Clark & Kathleen M. Carley, 2024. "An exploratory analysis of COVID bot vs human disinformation dissemination stemming from the Disinformation Dozen on Telegram," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 695-720, April.

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