Social Network Analysis of Irish Covid-19 Interactions on Telegram

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to the emergence of new concerns and apprehensions within diverse communities, with significantly distinctive ideologies. Additionally, the recent rise of alternative social media seems to have created favourable environments for nurturing polarised discourses. As a result, there is a growing belief that the common distrust and discontent with decisions related to Covid-19 have enabled the creation of a pipeline for political radicalisation. This work focuses on investigating this hypothesis in the context of Irish interactions on Telegram. Using Social Network Analysis, we examine the content and interactions of over 100 Telegram groups and channels, together with their evolution over the course of 2021. In our investigation, we employ different network modelling approaches and NLP techniques. We present and discuss the structures uncovered through community detection. Our findings indicate that, while the presence of far-right narratives in the Irish Telegram milieu is widespread, there is not sufficient evidence to support claims of radicalisation among wellness communities.