Mapping the Fringe Telegramsphere in Italy

Up next in this ECREA 2024 session is the excellent Giovanni Boccia Artieri, whose interest is in networking between fringe Telegram channels in Italy. These are connected to disinformation ecosystems, the spread of conspiracy theories, and the normalisation of populism and political extremism. Fringe online spaces can especially serve as laboratories for extremist narratives here – even though they can also provide a safe space for marginalised and disadvantaged communities.

The present study examines the fringe Telegramsphere in Italy, but eventually also aims to study its interconnections with mainstream media. Telegram is already know for fostering affective polarisation, spreading alternative news, providing a space for extremist groups, and enabling the dissemination of disinformation. Upstream and downstream dynamics between it and the mainstream media still have to be further examined, however.

The project began with a literature review that explored the term ‘fringe’, in order to merely follow existing biases in this term. Fringe is defined by platform features, a lack of moderation, negative connotations as a threat to democracy and public discourse, and an association especially with far-right extremism.

But there is a need to shift focus from fringe platforms to the processes of ‘fringification’, emphasising the dynamics that push digital spaces into opposition to the mainstream. This results from the intersection of multiple sub-processes, not only from platform characteristics: in addition to affordances and governance, it also includes aspects such as fringe semantics (public discourse, imaginaries, representation) and fringe publics (practices and identity).

In Italy, then, how do practices and discourses of toxicity develop within fringe Telegram channels? How does fringification influence affective polarisation? To address this, the project started by identifying the Italian Telegramsphere, through a two-step snowball sample starting with a blacklist created by fact-checking organisations, and analysed their network structures.

This shows a number of key clusters, including Christian pro-life channels; pro-Russian channels; and anti-vaccination channels. These have a range of political alignments; are promoted by various figures in the media and in fringe communities; are related to diverging issues; and display various communicative styles. Key channels are often those with the largest memberships, and with more general topic interests; channels with the greatest closeness centrality tend to be pro-Russian; channels with the greatest betweenness centrality are often run by particular influencers.

Such patterns also point to key developments over time; the closeness centrality of pro-Russian channels may indicate the issue shift from COVID-19 to the Russian war on Ukraine in Italian fringe politics, for instance. Their fringe-ness – e.g. in relation to the mainstream media – can be expressed very differently, and further research that moves beyond this observation without flattening and oversimplifying the analysis is necessary now.