«To people for people’s sake»: anthropological Telegram channels through the eyes of their authors

Abstract

The interview offers a collective reflection by authors of Russian-­language anthropological Telegram channels on how the Telegram messenger is becoming a significant infrastructure for the discipline’s presence in the public sphere while also serving as a working environment for academic communication. In a forum-­format, authors were invited to respond to thematic blocks of questions about their motivations for launching channels, their aims, understandings of audience, the distribution of content between online and offline spaces, and the ways they strive to sustain scholarly integrity. Responses capture a diversity of genres and writing regimes — from small media and a laboratory of autonomous thought to a tool for professional positioning and community-­building —and reveal persistent tensions between platform logics (for example, speed, brevity, and affective engagement) and academic norms (slow scholarship, peer review, and the ethics of working with data). Telegram is framed by the authors as a space where anthropological knowledge does not replace traditional formats as it is reassembled, tested, and circulated, increasing the discipline’s visibility and generating new forms of collegiality and feedback.