The messenger service Telegram is popular among opponents of pandemic response measures. While other social media companies increasingly moderate their content by blocking disinformation and hate speech, Telegram does not moderate information. Accordingly, the platform attracts content and opinions that cannot be found in other social media or journalistic online media. In this blog post, we look at the intensity of coverage on vaccination in 15 selected Swiss Telegram channels and compare it to that in 13 Swiss online media as well as that in the Swiss Twitter sphere. This comparison shows very different trends. While attention for the vaccination topic in online media and Twitter has clearly dwindled since the beginning of this year, it still remains relatively high in the Telegram channels.

Most of the 15 Swiss-German Telegram channels studied were launched after the pandemic had began. Since some of them were launched with a specific purpose (e.g., to share accounts of vaccination side effects or to connect unvaccinated people), their share of vaccination-related posts varies more strongly than in online media. They are, however, united in their rejection of the ”mainstream”, including journalististic online media.

Vaccination is by far the most discussed COVID-19 related policy measure on Telegram. At the beginning of the pandemic, the face masks were dominant as a topic for a few months. Then, starting in December 2020, posts about vaccination spiked after the first vaccines were developed. Similar trajectories can be seen in online media and on Twitter (Read our blog post on vaccination coverage in online media).

Figure 1 shows the proportion of news/posts with a vaccination reference in the respective arenas – online media, Twitter and Telegram – over time. The intensity of vaccination coverage was relatively similar in the three arenas until Spring 2021. Then, the trajectory on Telegram separated from those in the online media and Twitter. At times, posts about vaccination accounted for over a third of all messages in the Telegram channels. On closer inspection, the parallel trajectories of Twitter and online media are remarkable. The dynamics in the analyzed Telegram channels, on the other hand, seem to follow their own logic. While attention for the vaccination topic in online media and on Twitter is clearly dropping with the relaxation of the pandemic response measures, it is still relatively high in the Telegram channels despite the drop in attention levels.

What’s behind the sharp rise in vaccination-related posts in these Telegram channels?

Figure 2 shows the trajectories of different subtopics within the vaccination topic in the 15 Telegram channels studied. Starting in the Summer of 2021, the sub-topics of vaccination side effects and a possible mandatory vaccination led to a sharp increase in posts about vaccination. In the Fall of 2021, the COVID-19-certificate and preventive measures allowing only vaccinated, recovered, or tested individuals to attend events/venues emerged as a topic.

An examination of the content of the posts on vaccination shows that criticism of “elites” and authorities is very dominant in these Telegram channels. It can be assumed that this mistrust towards authorities will not disappear once the pandemic situation eases, it will show in other topics (e.g., the Russian invasion of Ukraine).