JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

In Germany, the messaging app Telegram served as a tool to organize protests against public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. A community of diverse groups formed around these protests, which used Telegram to discuss and share views outside of the general public discourse. This increasingly included conspiracy theories and extremist content, propagated by sources that opposed the mainstream positions of the government and traditional media. While the use of such sources has been thoroughly investigated, the role of mainstream information in these communities remains largely unclear.

Objective:

We aimed to better understand the use of mainstream information, i.e., from government actors and established media outlets, within critical Telegram communities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. We focused on the discourse about the COVID-19 vaccination, a key public health measure. As a central element of this study, we compared the Telegram discourse with the discourse on X (formerly Twitter) and in online news — this cross-platform analysis aimed to put the results into a broader societal context.

Methods:

We analyzed Telegram, X and news data, comparing discourse characteristics from three perspectives (mainstream information prevalence, discourse dynamics, and purpose of sharing information) for popular topics related to the COVID-19 vaccination discourse. To this end, we combined language model-based text clustering, time series, and thematic analysis in a mixed-methods approach.

Results:

We identified five popular vaccination-related topics that were discussed on both Telegram and X. The prevalence of mainstream information in the Telegram discourse varied per vaccination-related topic, ranging from roughly every tenth to every third post containing such information. Compared to X, mainstream information was, however, less often shared. For some topics, the intensity of the discourse over time was (highly) similar between Telegram, X, and online mainstream news. Finally, the thematic analysis revealed various motivations for using mainstream information on Telegram and X. As such, mainstream information served as credible information for current events, but also lead to accusations against the media or the government.

Conclusions:

Mainstream information sources were part of the information mix within the analyzed critical Telegram communities. The role and prevalence of these sources varied, however. We argue that differences between platforms may indicate the existence of information voids, which pose a particular challenge in managing infodemics. These insights emphasize the importance of contextualized cross-platform analyses and their potential for targeted crisis communication. Clinical Trial: Not applicable.