Breaking News as a Factor of Media Temporality in Telegram

One of the least studied phenomena in communication theory is social time in cyberspace. Although social time has been a subject of study since the classics of twentieth-century sociology and remains of interest today, there is a notable lack of both foundational work and empirical research applied to the online environment. Breaking news emerges as an important factor influencing the temporal dynamics of online communication. We hypothesise that breaking news has a significant impact on the temporal characteristics of interactions in digital spaces. Specifically, we investigate the frequency of breaking news and the resulting communication dynamics. To enhance the comparability of our study data, we analysed how breaking news influences the temporality of communication within three thematic areas across Telegram channels