The post frequency of members with active accounts was calculated based on the number of posts each account made in the lifetime of the associated chat. For the selected sample, all except six of these groups were created after August 2020. For each group, the message archives were filtered based on the groups’ member lists to identify currently active members. To gather the data, complete member lists and chat archives for each group were collected through Telegram’s API. To that end, though fewer in number, groups on Telegram offer the capacity to examine unique user activity, with which we can determine which accounts have been active and engaged with content and which accounts simply lurk. Additionally, channel data available through the Telegram API does not offer a comprehensive way of measuring channel engagement with posts at an individual user level. As channels are not consistent in how they operate and many do not have the capacity to comment on posts, it is difficult to assess the level of user activity and engagement in these spaces, as well as how many users participate or lurk. While some channels are controlled by a single user, others are controlled by a group of admins (in one QAnon channel, 38 of the influencers that have been central to the movement administrate the channel together). This piece seeks to analyse the QAnon community on Telegram by examining a curated list of 30 Telegram groups of varying sizes to determine a minimum baseline figure of how many potential active members presently operate on Telegram while assessing the health of these communities.Ĭurrently in our database there are more than 3,500 Telegram groups and channels that refer directly to QAnon and a further 10,000+ groups and channels linked to these, demonstrating a network of QAnon-adjacent chats in a multitude of languages and representing conspiracy movements internationally.Ĭhannels represent most of the QAnon digital assets on Telegram, some of these are simple and are used only for broadcasting messages, whereas others offer the capacity to comment on posts, a feature released in October 2020. Telegram is an important ecosystem to analyse the factionalism and evolution of QAnon in 2021. Over the past seven months, QAnon has seen some members siphoned off into other movements, or movements adjacent to QAnon, while other members simply continue to carry the torch and fight against the supposed deep state. “We may see the movement carry on as if nothing has changed that the movement is older and bigger than Trump himself, and it’s now up to them to carry the torch.”Ħ January exemplifies point one however, relevant to this piece are points two and three.“We may see factionalism in the movement, with some followers being siphoned off into other movements and groups and continuing their activism in ways that become only loosely tied to QAnon.”.“There could be instances of violence, as followers undertake an urgent campaign to bring about the arrest of supposed corrupt elites, celebrities, and the deep state as a whole.”. In October 2020 Amarasingam and Argentino analysed the impact of failed QAnon prophecies and highlighted ways in which QAnon would potentially carry on after an electoral loss. Since the electoral loss of former president Donald-Trump, as well as the silence of ‘Q’, the QAnon movement has had to significantly deal with the failure of their prophecies. Though extremely insightful, the authors did highlight that “Our analysis did not include data from Telegram, which is a popular venue for QAnon followers to distribute information among themselves, due to a lack of comprehensive data available for the platform.” In May 2021, Jared Holt and Max Rizzuto analyzed data from Gab, Parler, Dot-Win forums, 4chan and 8kun. In this shakeup, QAnon adherents migrated to various alt-tech platforms, yet two of them (Telegram and Gab) in the past seven months have turned into central hubs, where adherents and influencers have built new communities. Following the role that QAnon adherents, and other actors, played in the insurrection on 6 January 2021, large social media platforms cleaned house and deplatformed a plethora of groups and movements of diverse ideologies.
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