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Digital Political Campaigning and Instant Messaging Services: European Far-Right Parties and Politicians on Telegram

Elections
Campaign
Quantitative
Social Media
Communication
Big Data
Rémi Almodt
Babeş-Bolyai University
Rémi Almodt
Babeş-Bolyai University

Abstract

Digital political campaigning increasingly relies on alternative and fringe platforms, with Telegram emerging as a useful and increasingly frequented tool for European parties and politicians, especially among far-right political actors. This research explores how Telegram facilitates political messaging and campaigning, serving as both a persistent and episodic tool. The study examines Telegram's infrastructure, community-specific discourse, and link-sharing practices to hone in on its role in digital political engagement. Far-right digital campaigning reflects broader trends in digital campaigning like microtargeting, audience segmentation, and platform diversification (Neudert, 2020; Koc-Michalska et al., 2023). Telegram uniquely blends native content with link-sharing, driving users to partisan news, party sites, and social media. This cross-platform strategy amplifies far-right messages, forming an alternative media ecosystem that bypasses mainstream scrutiny (McSwiney, 2019; Doroshenko, 2018). Research highlights the growing role of data-driven approaches and social media in political campaigning (Dommett & Temple, 2018; Baldwin-Philippi, 2019). Telegram, known for anonymity, encryption, and minimal content moderation (Rogers, 2020; Van Dijck et al., 2021), enables far-right actors to bypass traditional media and engage audiences directly. While much literature focuses on far-right strategies in mainstream social media (Mudde, 2019; Engesser et al., 2020), Telegram’s use among political actors remains underexplored, and insights into how parties and politicians employ fringe media are still relatively scarce. Drawing on a dataset of Telegram channels and groups of far-right politicians and parties from several European countries, this research employs semi-automated quantitative content analyses to investigate far-right actors' messaging environment, content formats, and discursive strategies. In line with prior research that has focused on far-right social movements mostly (Urman & Katz, 2020; Zehring & Domahidi, 2023), it reveals how Telegram channels extend party infrastructure and function as independent mobilization tools and information-sharing environments, working with a mixture of native content and external resources, leading users towards other social media or alternative, partisan but also mainstream news media, as well as digital party infrastructure. In some cases, Telegram activity spikes during election cycles, demonstrating a periodic focus on electoral events. However, sustained non-electoral activity suggests a permanent campaigning model responsive to crises, policy debates, and contentious events. This mirrors far-right reliance on crisis-driven narratives to shape discourse and further provides much needed insight into how Telegram is employed as a digital campaigning tool, as well as the news and information sharing environment shaped and operated by political actors online.