Impact of Telegram Fake News and Viral Content on Public Opinion: A Regional Study

Fake news and viral content circulating in Telegram channels influence public opinion. This research analyzes existing ways to identify and neutralize this type of information. A sociological survey was conducted in March 2025 (n = 384) to study how people perceive Telegram news content, detect fakes, and judge reliability. Young participants proved to be active Telegram users. In general, 16.7% of respondents expressed trust in the news published there while 50% claimed to have encountered fakes, compared to 36.7% who had no such experience (or failed to identify it as such). Half of the respondents verified dubious information using other sources or search engines. While 37.0% relied only on trusted news sources, 36.7% never checked information, and 26.7% regularly used fact-checking resources. Fake news is characterized by absurd content, spelling errors, appeals to urgency or fear, a lack of sources, viral distribution, fact manipulation, and sensational headlines that do not match the content. About 60% of respondents recognized fakes as a serious societal threat. The same percentage had been deceived by fake news at least once before realizing it was false. Future research prospects include studying countermeasures against fake news and finding effective ways to protect young people from manipulation of public opinion.