Governments use propaganda, including through visual content -- or Politically Salient Image Patterns (PSIP) -- on social media, to influence and manipulate public opinion. In the present work, we collected Telegram post-history of from 989 Russian milbloggers to better understand the social and political narratives that circulated online in the months surrounding Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Overall, we found an 8,925% increase (p<0.001) in the number of posts and a 5,352% increase (p<0.001) in the number of images posted by these accounts in the two weeks prior to the invasion. We also observed a similar increase in the number and intensity of politically salient manipulated images that circulated on Telegram. Although this paper does not evaluate malice or coordination in these activities, we do conclude with a call for further research into the role that manipulated visual media has in the lead-up to instability events and armed conflict.

翻译：政府通过社交媒体上的宣传手段（包括视觉内容——或称政治显著性图像模式）来影响和操纵公众舆论。本研究收集了989名俄罗斯军事博主的Telegram发帖历史，以深入理解2022年俄罗斯全面入侵乌克兰前后数月间网络传播的社会政治叙事。总体而言，我们发现这些账号在入侵前两周内的发帖数量激增8,925%（p<0.001），图像发布量增长5,352%（p<0.001）。同时，我们观察到Telegram平台上传播的政治显著性篡改图像在数量和强度上也呈现类似增长。尽管本文未评估这些活动中的恶意性或协同性，但我们最终呼吁进一步研究篡改视觉媒体在局势动荡事件和武装冲突酝酿阶段所扮演的角色。