The Dark Side of the Telegram: Integrating Digital Methods, Social and Data Sciences

This study analyzes the dynamics of extremist and political groups on Telegram in Brazil from 2020 to 2024, combining digital methods, data science, and insights from digital sociology and anthropology. We identified four phases of group evolution: sporadic group creation before 2020, steady growth until January 2021, rapid expansion linked to anti-vaccine movements until January 2022, and a period of both group growth and closures from 2022 to 2023, influenced by judicial actions and platform moderation. After the January 8, 2023 attacks, there was a significant resurgence of extremist groups, including misogynistic, racist, and neo-Nazi communities, exploiting political instability to expand their influence. Our analysis emphasized differences between supergroups and channels, noting the prominent role of highly active users ("talkatives") and the frequent sharing of links to mainstream social media. We propose that the concept of "refracted publics" effectively captures the semi-underground topology observed on Telegram. Unlike traditional networked publics on mainstream platforms, refracted publics are characterized by their ephemerality, discoverability, decodability, and semi-sociality. Methodologically, we utilized the GPT-4 Omni API for automated violence detection and employed the CLIP model for image clustering, further enhancing our analysis of extremist content. Telegram's affordances enable the articulation between these refracted and dominant publics, positioning the platform as a "digital hinge." This complex configuration raises regulatory challenges that this study, using a mixed-method approach, aims to elucidate.