Anonymous Communication Strategy in Telegram: Toward Comparative Analysis of Russia and Belarus

This paper aims to study anonymous communication strategy in the Telegram. Telegram is a new cloud-messenger that is highly popular among bloggers and media in Russia and Belarus. Established by Pavel Durov in 2013, it offers secure and anonymous communication features. Anonymous communication has been studied by many scholars (Choudhury, Sharon, Watt, Zhang, etc), but it seems that more questions are left unanswered. This paper starts distinguishing anonymity from related notions of confidentiality and secrecy, privacy, and publicity. We provide some vocabulary to talk about anonymization and identification efforts by message sources and receivers. The paper highlights some of the limitations of current communication scholarship in this area such as anonymous communication strategy. The growing role of the Telegram messenger in the mass communications systems of Russia and Belarus indicates new opportunities for anonymous communication strategy in the digital society. The research methodology is based on a comparative analysis of statistical data on the audience of the leading Telegram news channels. The authors argue that the anonymous communication strategy has taken an important share of the market in both countries. In a comparative aspect, the indicators of the involvement of Telegram channels were analyzed. The main results of the study show that the use of various Telegram features both as a messenger and as a full-fledged media is constantly increasing. The intensity of the use of the messenger has increased and the variety of functions it performs has also increased. It has been established that the Telegram platform contributes to strengthening feedback from the audience. Chatbots have become a new opportunity to receive information from readers. The authors conclude that alternative Telegram channels play an important role in the digital environment.