Linked in the dark: A network approach to understanding information flows within the Dutch Telegramsphere

Recent studies have shown that the stricter content moderation policies imposed by mainstream social networking sites (SNSs) stimulated the growth of low-moderated but relatively open discussion platforms such as Telegram. Despite Telegram’s growing popularity among (deplatformed) digital exiles, and high potential for news dissemination, information consumption, mobilization, and radicalization, little is known about information flows with respect to politically and socially relevant topics within the Telegramsphere. We 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 over time. Using state-of-the-art web-mining, neural topic modeling, and social network analysis techniques on a unique data set that spans the full messaging history (N = 2,033,661) of 174 Dutch-language public Telegram chats/channels, we show that over time, conspiracy-themed, far-right activist, and COVID-19-sceptical communities dominated the Dutch Telegramsphere of current affairs. Our findings raise concerns with respect to Telegram’s polarization and radicalization capacity in the context of consuming socially and politically relevant information online.