Sentiment Analysis of Users’ Attitudes in News and Expert Telegram Channels Toward Import Substitution Technologies in Russia (Rutube and MAX)

Against the backdrop of a tightening policy on digital sovereignty, the Russian government has consistently advanced a course towards import substitution in the field of digital platforms. It has positioned the Rutube video hosting service and the MAX messaging service as key alternatives to foreign services. This article presents an empirical study on public perceptions of these technologies, based on Telegram discourse. The study encompasses more than 600 posts, 2,000 comments and 12,000 emoji reactions on news, political and technology channels from 2022 to 2025. By combining sentiment analysis (RuBERT) with lexical weak supervision and emoji classification, it reconstructs the emotional structure of users’ attitudes (trust, fear, sarcasm, skepticism and toxicity) and identifies differences between channel types and the dynamics of their development. The findings show that key factors shaping attitudes towards domestic platforms include willingness to switch to new technologies, institutional trust, and assessments of the government’s import substitution policy. However, the classical variables of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) – perceived usefulness and ease of use-play a secondary role in this context. In Russia, acceptance or rejection of platforms such as Rutube and MAX is largely influenced by political, psychological factors, including trust in government and regulatory bodies, perceived risks of privacy breaches, threats of digital surveillance, and coercive aspects of use. This study extends the Technology Acceptance Framework by incorporating the variable of institutional trust and the concept of «digital skeptics,» contributing to the understanding of politicized digitalization and the development of stable patterns of public confidence in contemporary digital technologies.

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