oa The Telegram COVID-19 Protest Dataset 2020-2022

Telegram, known for its hybrid architecture combining features of instant messaging and social networking sites, offers various communication modes and a high degree of anonymity. This has made it a key platform for contentious political movements and extremist actors and the most important platform for COVID-19-related protest communication. This paper presents a novel, manually curated dataset, capturing the German-language COVID-19 protest mobilization on Telegram from 2020 to 2022. The dataset includes public messages from 715 broadcast channels and 229 public group chats N= 5,641,026 messages. Unlike other datasets, this collection was manually classified and processed, providing a detailed longitudinal overview of this movement and its network. Data were collected at multiple points during the observation period, minimizing data loss due to deletions and enhancing the historical value of the dataset. Additional variables, including network data and geolocations, are available for further research. Ethical considerations were addressed through consultation with data protection officers and an ethics review board, ensuring compliance with data protection regulations. The dataset adheres to the FAIR principles, making it accessible and useful for future scholarly research on digital mobilization.