In collaboration with the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), ITSTIME took part in the study by developing a Social Network Analysis (SNA) to map the Anti-Government Extremism (AGE) network on Telegram, focusing on its transnational connections, and the propaganda stream towards other social media (messaging platforms and social networks) and websites.

Building on an initial list of seed accounts identified by ICCT, based on its previous research report, complemented by country experts’ inputs, an extensive list of more than 20,000 Telegram channels was compiled for this project through a snowballing method.145 The authors carried out a Social Network Analysis (SNA) of these accounts to explore potential transnational dimensions within the AGE network related to Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. The SNA was thus employed to conduct an empirical observation of various characteristics embodied by the considered AGE network. Specifically, the SNA has enabled the observation of the ability of the actors to relate to each other, their hierarchy, and the type of relational structure that exists within it.

You can read the full report at the following link:

https://icct.nl/sites/default/files/2026-03/2026%2003%2009%20Rekawek%20et%20al%20-%20Recent%20Developments%20of%20Anti-Government%20Threats%20%281%29.pdf