Recent studies have shown that the stricter content moderation policies imposed by mainstream SNS stimulated the growth of low-moderated but relatively open discussion platforms such as Telegram. Despite Telegram’s growing popularity among (deplatformed) digital exiles, and its high potential for news dissemination, information consumption, mobilization, and radicalization, little is known about how information flows with respect to politically and socially relevant topics within the greater Telegramsphere. We addressed this gap by adopting a social network approach to scrutinize the Telegramsphere as an information-sharing ecosystem of current affairs by uncovering how information flows indicated by content overlap and shared users influenced the structure of Telegram networks and shaped communities overtime.
Using state-of-the-art web-mining and social network analysis techniques on a unique data set that spanned the full messaging history (N= 2,033,661) of 174 Dutch-language public Telegram chats/channels, we show that the structure of the observed networks was strong and highly distinctive. Over time, conspiracy-themed, far-right activist, and COVID-19-sceptical communities dominated the Dutch Telegramsphere of current affairs.
Overall, the results indicated that consuming socially and politically relevant information in the Telegramsphere exposes users to content spillover from far-right and extremist communities especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The fact that more moderate and extremist chats/channels were “linked in the dark” raises concerns that the Dutch Telegramsphere has morphed into a ” self-perceived corrective'' against the "biased'' views of established institutions.