The final speaker in this session at the 2026 Association of Internet Researchers conference in Mexico City is Carolina Parreiras, whose focus is on the circulation of violent images on Telegram that would be censored on other platforms. Her focus here is especially on Brazil, and she is employing a lurker ethnography approach, during the Operação Contenção in late October and early November 2025.
Such lurking is a form of participant observation, but ethically and morally questionable, since the presence of the anthropologist in an online group is not visible to other members of that group; however, if the researcher announced themselves in such a group, they would most likely be removed from the group, and might even be attacked by group members. If nothing else, then, the material observed by lurking needs to be anonymised.
Operação Contenção targetted favelas in Rio de Janeiro, and was the largest and most deadly police operation in the city’s history. Police operations are not new in the city, and represent a form of government invasion of these spaces which is fiercely resisted by favela gangs; the lives of ordinary favela residents are often treated as irrelevant in these actions.
Immediately after the start of this operation, images from the clashes started to appear across various social media platforms; these covered the police build-up, the initial entry into the favelas, and increasingly the clashes and deaths that resulted. Several pre-existing right-wing Telegram groups and chats also covered these in detail, and celebrated the police operation.
Here, the focus was on imagery of the dead and injured, with a strong focus on graphic, bloody imagery; this content was also advertised on other platforms, with links to these Telegram channels. In between these posts, ads appeared for firearm purchase vetting services and US entry visa services.
Emoji responses to such graphic imagery included hearts, applause, laughter, and other highly offensive reactions; further, local governors and other official leaders were also congratulated for their execution of this police action. Notably, too, some of the photos and videos shown here appeared to have come from official, internal channels – e.g. from police officers or forensic experts who appeared to have leaked their recordings to these channels. These too received offensive emoji reactions.
These are forms of extreme speech, and show that Telegram is fertile ground for the spread of such content. It points to the complicated nature of Telegram as lived encryption: while it is an important channel for some who seek to escape state oppression, it also enables those who applaud it to circulate their own hateful content.
