Among Anti-Vaxxers, Esoterics and Right-Wing Radicals: Anti-Covid Communities’ Social Media Activism on Telegram

Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, various groups in Germany and other global regions have protested against governmental measures implemented to combat the virus. The Covid-skeptic scene in Germany particularly utilizes the social media platform Telegram for information exchange and the coordination of protest activities. In my PhD project, distinct anti-Covid communities on Telegram are detected and systematically compared to each other by analyzing their organizational structures and communication patterns, employing social network analysis and computational text analysis methods. The developed theoretical framework of WUNNC, encompassing the components worthiness, unity, network, numbers, and commitment, provides a systematic approach to assess the relative power dynamics and influence of different anti-Covid communities in the digital sphere. This study not only reveals nuanced insights about the German Covid-skeptic scene but also introduces a valuable methodology for studying other social movement communities based on their social media activities.