Granting Access to War: Ethics and Accountability in the Telegram Archive of the War

The Telegram Archive of the War (TG Archive) represents one of the most extensive emergency archiving efforts to document the ongoing war in Ukraine through the lens of social media communication. Developed as both an archival repository and a research environment available via the TG Research platform, the TG Archive raises fundamental questions about how ephemeral born-digital traces of war are preserved, structured, accessed, and interpreted.

The keynote of the Data Sprint 2026: Witnessing and Justice in Data-Based Research will examine the project's current state, the ethical responsibilities it carries, and the challenges that accompany both granting access and necessary restrictions.  

We will discuss the present state of the TG Research tool and the scholarly fields it primarily attracts. What kinds of research questions are being asked through the Archive? Particular attention will be given to technical challenges currently affecting research workflows, primarily the limitations of linguistic tools that translate spoken Ukrainian and Russian into English, including slang and vernacular expressions, in ways that preserve contextual meaning.

A central focus of the keynote will be the ethical and legal responsibilities involved in safeguarding sensitive and personal data. As requests for cooperation increase — including from war crimes accountability initiatives and projects beyond academia — the Archive must navigate the tension between enabling research and protecting individuals whose lives and safety may still be affected by the circulation of such materials. The talk will address how current user agreements and access policies attempt to limit misuse, and why, in some cases, restriction rather than openness becomes an ethical necessity.

Finally, the keynote will outline the future prospects of the TG Archive: completing data import, improving usability, refining access policies, and deepening engagement with research communities through structured feedback. It will also address emerging ethical challenges arising from the  Archive’s expansion, including work with semi-private digital communication and the implications of preserving materials that fall outside earlier standards of public availability. Through these reflections, the keynote will argue that granting access to war data is not merely a technical procedure but a form of governance that shapes the TG Archive’s contribution to accountability, memory, and justice.

Moderator: Prof. Dr. Tanya Lokot (Dublin City University)

To register, please send a short email to warsensing@europa-uni.de by 29 March to express your interest in joining the public program.

The event will be part of the public program of the online conference and data sprint "Witnessing and Justice in Data-Based Research" which is scheduled for 31 March - 1 April 2026  within the framework of the ongoing collaboration between the "War Sensing" project (European University Viadrina) and the CRC "Media of Cooperation" (Siegen University), the Telegram Archive of the War (Center for Urban History in Lviv) and the School of Communications/Conflict Institute (Dublin City University).