Both Norwegian and global authorities have warned that the social media Telegram is full of extremist propaganda and threat actors. Still, millions of people use Telegram as their source of news. We saw this first during the Ukraine-Russia war, and now through the war in Gaza-Israel. One of these users is Shaymaa Abdalhadi from Oslo. She downloaded the app last October to keep up-to-date on Gaza, where she herself has family. – Here I get what traditional media do not show. Names, photos and videos are currently coming directly from locals, says Shaymaa Abdalhadi. She has more confidence in information from established media, but still wants to see the content shared on Telegram. At some point, the graphic content on Telegram became too much. Shaymaa Abdalhadi spoke to her psychologist and they agreed that she uses the app only twice a day, instead of all the time. Photo: Sahara Muhaisen / news This is Telegram Telegram was developed by the Russian regime critic and billionaire Pavel Durov and his brother, who now lives in Dubai. The app has a monthly user base of over 800 million and daily users of 55 million. You can be anonymous on Telegram, but the app requires a phone number to create a profile. Telegram’s encryption has been the subject of much debate. By default, Telegram does not offer end-to-end encryption on its messaging service between users, but this can be turned on via so-called secret chats. Telegram is not currently defined as Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs), and is therefore not subject to the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), and thus is not covered by the EU’s new rules in the area. Source: Håvard Lundberg from the analysis agency Analyze & tall and Telegram statistics (2024) by Demadsage Great interest in war Messages and videos from the war often appear on Telegram first, before they are shared elsewhere on the web. Anyone can create a channel on Telegram. You can find channels run by both the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Hamas’ online patrol, biased and impartial journalists, critical and uncritical activists, influencers hunting for more followers and ordinary locals who are fed up and want to show the world what is going on. And these channels are becoming very popular. As one of many examples, the Telegram channel, Gaza Now, experienced strong growth after the events of October 7, according to TGStat. From 350,000 subscribers on 4 October to approximately two million five months later. The same interest is seen among Russian-speaking users globally. 85 percent of them use the app mainly for news, according to Statista. Analyst Håvard Lundberg from the agency Analyze & tall has carried out several investigations into how misinformation is spread on Telegram. He believes Telegram’s popularity during wars is due to a high degree of privacy, minimal moderation of the content and little advertising. According to him, Telegram differs from other messaging services and social media because of the history of the founder of the company. – It was developed by Pavel Durov, who is a critic of the Russian regime. He fled his home country after refusing to provide user data to the authorities. From the start, the Telegram creator has focused on values such as freedom of expression and privacy. This has led to the app developing into a platform that values openness and freedom. But this freedom also has a downside. – This open approach to freedom of expression means that Telegram has become a favorite platform for spreading errors and disinformation, and we see this particularly in connection with conflicts, says Lundberg. This is what Telegram looks like. The notifications can be up to hundreds per minute. Illustration: Sahara Muhaisen / news Unfiltered freedom Shaymaa believes that the news coverage from major media such as news, Al Jazeera and Reuters are often general headlines or a strip on the screen. She goes to Telegram to find details. On February 4, she came across a message about an attack on a house in the city of Deir al-Balah, where several people had been killed. She recognized the name of the family. It was her uncle’s home. She saw the message just a few minutes after it happened. Her mother, who doesn’t use Telegram, didn’t catch on until two days later. – We live together, but I didn’t dare tell my mother that her brother and several others had died. She found out about it when she finally got hold of the family over the phone. Two days had passed by then, says Shaymaa. When the war is over, Shaymaa Abdalhadi says she will keep the app Telegram, among other things to read news. Photo: Sahara Muhaisen / news news has subsequently seen messages and videos on Telegram about the incident from 4 February. news could not find news reports from established media about this incident. news’s ethics editor Per Arne Kalbakk says there are two reasons why editorial media do not show everything. The media must be careful about showing videos of people who are dead, injured or in shock. They must also investigate whether the content published on social media is genuine, and not AI-generated or taken out of context. – We have requirements for source criticism, fact-checking and ethics. Telegram doesn’t do that, says Kalbakk. Shaymaa does not like that established media do not share everything that is posted on Telegram about the war. – Do you understand that editor-controlled media must fact-check the messages, know who is behind them and why, and filter the scope before we serve brutal content to the public? – I don’t care who is behind it, as long as I get to know exactly which street and family are affected – whether it is my family or not. – I can even see it with my own eyes, says Shaymaa and shows us a video of the dead body of her three-month-old being carried out of the ruins. Still a little skeptical Even though Shaymaa prefers Telegram to traditional media, she occasionally sees content that surprises her. A photo of a bride and groom getting married in a refugee tent in Gaza recently went viral. Three days later, messages circulated in Telegram channels that the bride and groom had been killed in an attack. – The story sounded too incredible and too perfect to be true, says Shaymaa. The picture of the bride and groom went viral on February 16. A fake news that the bride and groom had been killed was published on Telegram on February 19. Arab fact-checkers later determined that, although the wedding was real, it was another couple who was killed, not the newlyweds. – It is important to be critical of social media, but I prefer unfiltered content and thinking for myself over missing information, says the 24-year-old.
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Popular app for war news. First Ukraine and Russia, and now Gaza and Israel. – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
