DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18483508
title: PTNDataset

description: Telegram News Persian Dataset

Overview

This dataset contains structured data collected from public Telegram channels related to Iranian political news and information. It includes channel-level metadata and post-level content, with optional media references, collected for academic research purposes.

The dataset accompanies a research article currently under review and is released to support transparency, reproducibility, and further research on political communication and information diffusion on Telegram.

All data were collected from public Telegram channels only.

Dataset Structure

The dataset consists of two JSON files:

1. `channels.json` channel-level metadata  2. `posts.json` post-level content, grouped by channel

Channels File (channels.json)

The channels file is a list of channel metadata objects, one per channel.

Example:

  [
    {
    "id": <channel id>,
    "title": <channel title>,
    "url": <channel url>,
    "date": <channel creation time>,
    "about": <channel description>,
    "subscribers": <channel number of subscribers>,
    "source": <TGstat or recommended>,
    "verified": <0 or 1>,
    "restricted":  <0 or 1>,
    "fake":  <0 or 1>
  },
  ...
]

Field description




Field
Description


id
Unique channel identifier assigned by Telegram


title
Channel name at the time of collection


url
Channel username as in `t.me/<url>`


date
Channel creation date (Unix timestamp, milliseconds)


about
Channel description    


subscribers
Number of subscribers at time of collection


source
Channel source (`TGstat` or `recommended`)  


verified
Whether the channel is verified by Telegram


restricted
Whether the channel is restricted        


channel_type
specifies the nature of the channel: including instant news services, official domestic (Iran-based) news channel, official international news channel, or political  




Posts File (posts.json)

The posts file is a dictionary indexed by channel URL.Each key corresponds to one channel, and its value is a list of post objects.

Example



{
  "channel_x_url": [
    {
      "id": "12345",
      "uid": "1",
      "channel_id": 10012345,
      "date": "2025-07-15T00:00:00+00:00",
      "text": "...",
      "views": "1000",
      "forwards": "100",
      "reactions": [
        {
          "emoji": "❤️",
          "count": "1000",
        }
      ],
      "comments": [],
      "forwarded_from": "10067890",
      "origin_id" : "67890"
      "media_type": "photo",
      "has_media": true,
      "photo_id": "1234567890123456789",
      "size": "100000"
    },
    ...
  ]
}
```


Field description




Field
Description


id
Post ID assigned by Telegram (unique per channel)  


uid
Dataset-wide unique post identifier (assigned incrementally)


channel_id
Telegram channel ID


date
Timestamp of publication


text
Text of the post


views
Number of views


forwards
Number of forwards


reactions
List of emoji reactions with counts


comments
List of comments       


forwarded_from
Channel ID of the origin post


origin_id
Telegram Id of the origin post


media_id
Media ID given by Telegram upon upload


media_type
Type of attached media (`photo`, `video`, `document`, or `null`)


size
Media size in bytes




Data Types and Encoding

- All integer values are stored as strings to avoid overflow and parsing inconsistencies across platforms.- Text fields may contain Persian (Farsi) and Arabic characters.- Files are encoded in UTF-8.- JSON format is preferred over CSV to preserve text integrity and nested structures.

Ethical Considerations

- Only public Telegram channels were collected.- No private messages, private groups, or personal accounts are included.- Usernames of commenters were pseudonimized.- The dataset complies with common ethical guidelines for social media research.

Intended Use

This dataset is intended for:- Computational social science- Political communication research- Network analysis- Content and discourse analysis- Media diffusion studies

Contact

For questions or clarifications, please contact:- Maintainer: Amirsiavosh Bashardoust or Caroline Violot- Affiliation: University of Lausanne- Email: amirsiavosh.bashardoust@unil.ch or caroline.violot@unil.ch