This study examines how Russian far-right communities on Telegram shape perceptions of political figures through memes and visual narratives. Far from passive spectators, these actors co-produce propaganda, blending state-aligned messages with their own extremist framings. In Russia, such groups are central because they articulate the ideological foundations of the war against Ukraine and reflect the regime's gradual drift toward ultranationalist rhetoric. Drawing on a dataset of 200,000 images from expert-selected far-right Telegram channels, the study employs computer vision and unsupervised clustering to identify memes featuring Russian (Putin, Shoigu) and foreign politicians (Zelensky, Biden, Trump) and to reveal recurrent visual patterns in their representation. By leveraging the large-scale and temporal depth of this dataset, the analysis uncovers differential patterns of legitimation and delegitimation across actors and over time. These insights are not attainable in smaller-scale studies. Preliminary findings show that far-right memes function as instruments of propaganda co-production. These communities do not simply echo official messages but generate bottom-up narratives of legitimation and delegitimation that align with state ideology. By framing leaders as heroic and opponents as corrupt or weak, far-right actors act as informal co-creators of authoritarian legitimacy within Russia's informational autocracy.

翻译：本研究探讨了俄罗斯Telegram平台上的极右翼社群如何通过表情包和视觉叙事塑造政治人物形象。这些行为者远非被动旁观者，而是通过将国家导向信息与自身极端主义框架相融合，共同参与宣传生产。在俄罗斯，此类群体具有核心地位，因为它们阐明了针对乌克兰战争的意识形态基础，并反映了政权逐渐向极端民族主义话语的倾斜。本研究基于专家选取的极右翼Telegram频道中20万张图像构成的数据集，采用计算机视觉和无监督聚类方法，识别出包含俄罗斯（普京、绍伊古）及外国政治家（泽连斯基、拜登、特朗普）的表情包，并揭示其表征中反复出现的视觉模式。通过利用该数据集的大规模性和时间纵深性，分析揭示了不同行为主体之间以及随时间推移而变化的合法化与去合法化差异模式，这些洞见是小规模研究无法获得的。初步研究结果表明，极右翼表情包发挥着宣传协同生产工具的功能。这些社群不仅简单复述官方信息，更生成与国家意识形态相契合的自下而上的合法化与去合法化叙事。通过将领导人塑造为英雄形象、将对手描绘为腐败或软弱，极右翼行为者成为俄罗斯信息专制体制内威权合法性的非正式共同建构者。