In response to disinformation and propaganda from Russian online media following the invasion of Ukraine, Russian media outlets such as Russia Today and Sputnik News were banned throughout Europe. To maintain viewership, many of these Russian outlets began to heavily promote their content on messaging services like Telegram. In this work, we study how 16 Russian media outlets interacted with and utilized 732 Telegram channels throughout 2022. Leveraging the foundational model MPNet, DP-means clustering, and Hawkes processes, we trace how narratives spread between news sites and Telegram channels. We show that news outlets not only propagate existing narratives through Telegram but that they source material from the messaging platform. For example, across the websites in our study, between 2.3% (ura.news) and 26.7% (ukraina.ru) of articles discussed content that originated/resulted from activity on Telegram. Finally, tracking the spread of individual topics, we measure the rate at which news outlets and Telegram channels disseminate content within the Russian media ecosystem, finding that websites like ura.news and Telegram channels such as @genshab are the most effective at disseminating their content.

翻译：为应对俄罗斯入侵乌克兰后其网络媒体散布的虚假信息和宣传，今日俄罗斯与卫星通讯社等俄罗斯媒体机构在欧洲全境遭到封禁。为维持受众规模，许多俄罗斯媒体开始大力在Telegram等即时通讯服务平台上推广其内容。本研究通过MPNet基础模型、DP-means聚类算法与霍克斯过程，追踪了2022年间16家俄罗斯媒体机构与732个Telegram频道间的互动与内容利用模式。我们揭示了新闻网站不仅通过Telegram传播既有叙事，更从该通讯平台获取素材。例如在本研究涵盖的网站中，涉及Telegram平台起源/衍生内容的文章比例从ura.news的2.3%到ukraina.ru的26.7%不等。最后，通过追踪具体话题的传播路径，我们量化了俄罗斯媒体生态系统中新闻机构与Telegram频道的内容扩散速率，发现ura.news等网站与@genshab等Telegram频道在内容传播方面最为高效。