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.