A Real-Time Platform to Monitoring Misinformation on Telegram

Abstract

The large-scale dissemination of misinformation through social media has become a critical issue, harming public health, social stability and democracy. In Brazil, 79.9% of the population uses social networks, and the Telegram is present in 65% of the country’s smartphones. Due to its popularization, many groups have used this instant messaging application to spread misinformation, especially as part of articulated political or ideological campaigns. Telegram provides two essential features that facilitate the spread of misinformation, public groups and channels. Through these resources, false information can deceive thousands of people in a short time. In this context, we present MST, a Real-Time platform to find, gather, analyze and visualize misinformation on Telegram. To evaluate the proposed platform, we built a dataset from the Brazilian general election campaign in 2022, obtained from Telegram public chat groups and channels.