This story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.net/en/.

This story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.net/en/.
License: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/
international.
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Germany’s COVID sceptics fuelled by Russian media and far-Right conspiracies
By: []
Date: None

A wave of false information, some of it spread by foreign media outlets, has fuelled mass protests against the German government’s response to COVID-19, openDemocracy can reveal.

Tens of thousands of people have joined multiple demonstrations across Germany since the start of the pandemic, many of them inspired by conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific claims shared on the social media platform Telegram, openDemocracy has found. Often, these are amplified by media outlets linked to the Russian state. The initially diverse COVID-sceptic movement has become increasingly radicalised, turning towards the far Right.

During a four-month investigation in collaboration with the political data scientist, Josef Holnburger, openDemocracy analysed some 20 million messages from more than 2,000 public channels and groups on Telegram. The service, which doubles as a messaging app and has grown to 500 million users worldwide in the past year, has become a haven for users banned from platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Messaging that undermined scientific consensus around the pandemic – for example, questioning the efficacy of face masks and vaccines – was prominent in the channels and groups openDemocracy analysed. An article from an Austrian paper entitled ‘Horror risks: after the coronavirus vaccine, the body fights its own cells’ was viewed nearly 200,000 times in one channel alone.

[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/germanys-covid-sceptics-fuelled-by-russian-media-and-far-right-conspiracies/