Radical Mobilization in Times of Crisis: Use and Effects of Appeals and Populist Communication Features in Telegram Channels

Abstract

Social crisis situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic provide a fertile ground for radical actors and social movements to strengthen their radical mobilization—mainly using social media. In light of the deplatforming efforts of social media platforms that forced radical actors to establish new channels to continue their discourses and the recent crisis that opened a discursive opportunity structure, we investigate how radical actors use Telegram for mobilization. Based on a longitudinal manual content analysis of 13,371 messages from 188 German Telegram channels of the Querdenken movement, conspiracy, and far-right actors, we examine mobilization strategies (namely direct appeals and populist blame game) and their success (retransmission) between March 2020 and December 2021. We found that both offline and online appeals and the use of anti-elitism increased significantly over time. The use of direct and indirect mobilization attempts is related to the ideological background of the actors, with direct appeals being favored by the Querdenken movement. Furthermore, the results shed light on the mechanisms of radical mobilization on Telegram, showing that both direct appeals and the populist blame game are successful strategies for radical actors because they increase message retransmission.