BelElect

The dataset contains Telegram posts from 1.08.2020 to 14.04.2021 covering the time of the presidential elections in Belarus and the protests in the country after the elections. The protests were motivated by the accusation of falsification of the election results. These events split the country in state and opposition supporters.

We included four state-supporting channels ONT NEWS, BelTA, Zheltye Slivy and Pool Pervogo, and four opposition channels BelSAT, Belarus Seychas, Belamova and TUT.BY with posts in Russian and Belorussian languages. The entire dataset was downloaded on April 15, 2021 using the built-in function of the Telegram messenger. The dataset contains 140.388 Telegram posts (76.918 opposition and 63.470 state); 109.721 posts contain non-empty text (58.976 opposition and 50.745 state). We limited the size of images and media files to 8 GB. The media files exceeding this limit were not included into download. They can be added using the message ID and channel ID.

本数据集收录了2020年8月1日至2021年4月14日期间的Telegram帖文，覆盖白俄罗斯总统选举及选举后该国爆发抗议活动的完整时段。此次抗议活动源于选举结果造假的指控，该事件将该国民众分裂为支持政府与反对派两大阵营。

本次研究纳入了4个支持政府的频道：ONT NEWS、BelTA、Zheltye Slivy及Pool Pervogo，以及4个反对派频道：BelSAT、Belarus Seychas、Belamova与TUT.BY，上述频道的帖文均以俄语及白俄罗斯语发布。整份数据集于2021年4月15日通过Telegram内置功能下载获取，共包含140388条Telegram帖文（其中反对派帖文76918条，支持政府帖文63470条）；109721条帖文包含非空文本内容（反对派帖文58976条，支持政府帖文50745条）。我们将图片及媒体文件的下载上限设定为8GB，超出该容量限制的媒体文件未被纳入初始数据集，用户可通过帖文ID与频道ID自行补充缺失的媒体文件。