Right-wing Extremists and covid

........ Key Findings
Almost 5% of all messages posted by right-wing extremist (RWE) Telegram channels were related to COVID-19. ISD’s original sample of 239 Telegram channels posted 489,215 total messages between January 2020 and June 2021. Using keyword analysis to isolate COVID-19 related messages, ISD surfaced 22,404 messages from a set of 167 Telegram channels that used these terms, meaning 4.57% of all RWE Telegram activity in the period examined was related to COVID-19.
Right-wing extremist channels frequently promote anti-vaccine conspiracy content. Almost 30% of all messages relating to COVID-19 reference vaccines, primarily misinformation, false claims and conspiracies framing vaccines as unsafe for humans. Discussions also promoted mistrust of pharmaceutical companies tasked with manufacturing vaccines; 9 of the 10 most viewed Telegram messages in our sample referenced vaccines in this manner.

There is a clear nexus between right-wing extremist communities and COVID-19 conspiracy content on Telegram. ISD found consistent crossover in topic relevancy between white supremacist and conspiracy communities on Telegram when discussing
COVID-19. Discussions related to vaccine production and restrictions/lockdowns were the most popular COVID-19 narratives among both communities. The most-shared external domain among white supremacist Telegram channels when discussing
COVID-19 was Zerohedge, a site that has frequently published conspiratorial content about the pandemic.
ISD links US right-wing extremist activists to a COVID-19 conspiracy hub. ISD was able to link two usernames involved in running a Telegram COVID-19 conspiracy channel to two prominent US RWE activists, confirming the existence of a highly concerning overlap between RWE actors and COVID-19 conspiracy content. This Telegram channel was found to serve as
a COVID-19 conspiracy hub for numerous conspiracy and extremist channels, including at least three white supremacist channels.
Right-wing extremist Telegram communities rely heavily on image and video content. ISD found that 29% of all data examined did not contain any text and was therefore outside the bounds of analysis. This finding tracks with previous ISD research on RWE Telegram communities and highlights the challenge for content moderation efforts that often struggle to
capture non-text-based content, as well as implications for future research on Telegram, that may unwittingly omit a large portion of image/visual data.7
K .......

Crusader wrote:Define "right wing extremist".

JMWinPR wrote:Only 5% of the conversations are fauciflu related. I think that is not only remarkable but admirable.

RV wrote:

Crusader wrote:Define "right wing extremist".

I absolutely agree. Democrats call ANYONE who doesn't agree with abortion, socialism, communism, doing away with the Constitution and government over-reach as "right wing extremists"...

JMWinPR wrote:Only 5% of the conversations are fauciflu related. I think that is not only remarkable but admirable.

RV wrote:

RV wrote:

Crusader wrote:Define "right wing extremist".

I absolutely agree. Democrats call ANYONE who doesn't agree with abortion, socialism, communism, doing away with the Constitution and government over-reach as "right wing extremists"...

...and yet there has never been a definition of what is meant by "right wing extremist" so I guess my definition was accurate!