Social media platforms, particularly Telegram, play a pivotal role in shaping public perceptions and opinions on global and national issues. Unlike traditional news media, Telegram allows for the proliferation of user-generated content with minimal oversight, making it a significant venue for the spread of controversial and misinformative content. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Telegram's popularity surged in Singapore, a country with one of the highest rates of social media use globally. We leverage Singapore-based Telegram data to analyze information flows within groups focused on COVID-19 and climate change. Using k-means clustering, we identified distinct user archetypes, including Strategic Disruptor, Empirical Enthusiast, Inquisitive Moderate, and Critical Examiner, each contributing uniquely to the discourse. We developed a model to classify users into these clusters (Precision: Climate change: 0.99; COVID-19: 0.95).
@article{arxiv.2406.06717,
title = {User Archetypes and Information Dynamics on Telegram: COVID-19 and Climate Change Discourse in Singapore},
author = {Val Alvern Cueco Ligo and Lam Yin Cheung and Roy Ka-Wei Lee and Koustuv Saha and Edson C. Tandoc and Navin Kumar},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.06717},
year = {2024}
}