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：各国政府利用社交媒体上的视觉内容（即政治显著性图像模式，PSIP）进行宣传，以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历史帖子，以更深入理解2022年俄罗斯全面入侵乌克兰前后数月间线上传播的社会与政治叙事。总体而言，我们发现这些账号在入侵前两周的帖子数量激增了8,925%（p<0.001），发布的图像数量增加了5,352%（p<0.001）。同时，我们观察到Telegram上传播的政治操纵性图像在数量与强度上也出现了类似增长。尽管本文未评估这些活动是否存在恶意或协同行为，但我们最终呼吁学界进一步研究操纵性视觉媒体在不稳定事件及武装冲突酝酿阶段所扮演的角色。