Telegram has become the main platform for conspiracy narratives. This was the result of a study by the University of Passau. In certain Facebook groups, too, the negative attitude towards assessing the pandemic is the consistent pattern. The researchers found that the people and groups examined expressed themselves more radically on Telegram than on Facebook.
Degradation, agitation and anti-Semitism
From March to December 2020, a team of researchers analyzed more than 1,800 Telegram and Facebook posts that were related to the content of the pandemic. The focus was on groups and channels of prominent populists such as Attila Hildmann, Eva Hermann and AfD politician Björn Höcke. The conclusion: “The research group has looked into a deep abyss,” explains study leader Ralf Hohlfeld, holder of the chair for communication science at the University of Passau. “We see in the sum of the contributions above all a crude mixture of historical distortion, degradation, agitation, incitement and anti-Semitism.”
30 percent of hate mail with calls to action
According to the Passau research team, almost three quarters of the posts on right-wing populist platforms were characterized by negative rhetoric and disparagement. As the university reports, right-wing populist actors on Telegram and Facebook called for action in 30 percent of the conversations about the pandemic. In a quarter of these cases, the calls were extremely radical. These included calls to storm the Bundestag and death threats against the Chancellor.
Bavaria’s Minister of Justice demands control of Telegram
It was only on Tuesday that Bavaria’s Justice Minister Georg Eisenreich (CSU) announced that the Free State wanted to better control Telegram. Because so far the messenger service does not fall under the Network Enforcement Act. Violations of the law cannot be punished here. “Telegram has long been a mass medium – and one that also attracts corona deniers, Reich citizens and right-wing extremists,” Eisenreich told “Bild”. Such services cannot be allowed to remain under the radar.
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