Introducing a Comprehensive Dataset of COVID-19 Querdenker Activity on Telegram

Finally, we end this ECREA 2024 session with a video presentation by Kilian Bühling, whose focus is on the use of Telegram for German-language COVID-19 protest mobilisation. This covers some 715 broadcast channels and 229 public group chats. Telegram has a 10% audience reach in Germany, and is used especially by contentious social movements for both public and private communication. The perceived anonymity and lack of content moderation here are especially attractive to such groups – including the Querdenker movement which opposed public health measures to manage the COVID-19 pandemic.

This movement was established in spring 2020, and engaged in both online and offline mobilisation through highly decentralised and localised structures. The present project identified Telegram channels related to the movement by creating an extensive curated dataset which also serves as an important historical document, given the ephemerality of the channels and posts it contains. The dataset combines a number of distinct data collections, selecting and classifying these based on their reference to the Querdenker movement; their role as individuals who are ideological entrepreneurs directly linked to the movement; and/or the close affiliation of other groups with the core Querdenker movement.

The core movement peaked in activity towards the end of 2020; individual ideological entrepreneurs and peripheral movements became more visible after this point, but did not reach the same volume of posting activity (but some individuals and groups were highly active at later points). Some Querdenker groups can be geolocated based on their own information; western and southwestern Germany are especially prominent here, reflecting the movement’s origins in Stuttgart as well as the major population centres in Germany.

Connections between entities on Telegram increase notably over time, before plateauing eventually; this indicates greater mutual recognition and organisation over time, as well as the emergence of key influencers within the movement over time.

A de-identified version of the dataset is now being made public for use by other research teams, supported by the professional academic data archive GESIS and subject to a data use agreement. It will be made available shortly.