Abstract
Large social media platforms are criticized for commodifying user data, corporate surveillance, and perceived censorship of political speech. As a result, some users flock to alternative platforms, like Telegram, Signal, VK, Parler, or Gettr. This study examines the roles of political ideology, anti-establishment views, and privacy concerns in the use of these five platforms. Based on survey data gathered in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and Germany (n = 1500 each), we find that alternative platform use is highest in the United States and in Germany. Digitally skilled, young, male, educated, and right-wing individuals are drawn to alternative social media. Across all five platforms, right-wing ideology is a stronger predictor of usage than anti-establishment views. In the pooled sample, privacy concerns do not correlate with usage. However, given inconsistencies in the roles of privacy concerns and anti-establishment views, we highlight the importance of specific platform affordances and national context.
Keywords
Introduction
Globally, citizens use social media for connection and interaction, information and self-expression (Kemp, 2023; Newman et al., 2024). Social media can be defined as Internet-based “services that allow individuals, communities, and organizations to collaborate, connect, interact, and build a community by enabling them to create, co-create, modify, share, and engage with user-generated content” (McCay-Peet and Quan-Haase, 2017: 46). Today, established, large-scale social media constitute critical digital infrastructures in a variety of social domains, including culture, entertainment, business, or politics (Van Dijck et al., 2018). These include the platforms offered by Meta, Google, “X,” or Reddit (Boulianne et al., 2024). Yet, despite their widespread use, these social media platforms are often the subject of public criticism and at the center of controversies.
Large social media companies are charged with harvesting and commodifying user data (Morrow, 2022) and they are implicated in commercial and/or government surveillance (Dencik and Cable, 2017). Various studies find significant privacy concerns among social media users (Lee and Yuan, 2020), and few users trust social media platforms to responsibly safeguard their personal data (Business Insider, 2022). In the realm of politics, large social media are criticized for facilitating the spread of hate and misinformation (Wardle and Derakhshan, 2017). Some claim that social media unduly interfere in political discourse and engage in illegitimate censorship of political speech (cf., Mosleh et al., 2024). In a 2020 Pew study (Vogels et al., 2020), 73% of US respondents (and 90% of Republicans) believed that social media sites “intentionally censor political viewpoints that they find objectionable.”
As a result, some users eschew large, established social media sites and seek out alternative platforms. Alternative social media platforms can be understood as emergent social media sites that position their services in explicit contrast or even opposition to established competitors (cf., Gehl, 2015, 2017; Stocking et al., 2022). Some services, like Telegram or Signal, tout their strict privacy functions and policies (Doffman, 2024). They criticize more established platforms’ data practices and promise a safe harbor from surveillance. Some, like Parler, Gettr, or VK, address politically disaffected users and promise a lack of content moderation or “censorship” of user-generated content (cf., Jasser et al., 2023; Stocking et al., 2022). In this study, we examine antecedents of using five alternative social media platforms, Telegram, Signal, VK, Gettr, and Parler, focusing on political ideology, anti-establishment views, and privacy concerns.
This is the first study to present cross-national comparative data testing a robust framework for explaining the use of five alternative social media platforms. It is based on survey data gathered in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and Germany (n = 1500 each) in early 2023 (n = 7500). The large sample size allows us to analyze the use of alternative social media platforms despite their limited user bases within any single country. A cross-national perspective is important as it helps us identify which patterns are specific to country context and which patterns are broader in scope and relate to platform affordances or general predictors of social media usage.
Alternative social media: Telegram, Signal, VK, Parler, and Gettr
This study examines the use of five alternative social media platforms: Telegram, Signal, VK, Parler, and Gettr. Table 5 in Appendix 1 provides a brief overview of these platforms. To date, there is no cross-national study of the use of alternative social media platforms in Western democracies. However, in 2022, Pew Research Center asked a sample of US respondents if they had heard of various platforms. Approximately 38% had heard of Parler, 27% had heard of Telegram, and 10% had heard of Gettr. Truth Social (27%) and Rumble (20%) were also familiar to a sizable share of the population; however, these platforms are not examined in the present study as Truth Social is highly focused on US politics and Rumble is an online video platform that differs from the social networking platforms examined here. Data from Germany indicate that Telegram and Signal are the most popular alternative social media platforms in Europe’s largest market (Meltwater, 2023), so these two platforms are also considered in this study.
Telegram is a mobile instant messaging service, founded in 2013 by the brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov. Its worldwide popularity stems from its supposedly high level of confidentiality and security of communication (Salikov, 2019: 90). Telegram offers its users anonymity, end-to-end encryption, and self-deleting messages. Signal also is a mobile instant messaging service offering end-to-end encryption. The non-profit Signal Foundation (formerly Open Whisper Systems) founded the service in 2014. Telegram and Signal are similar in that they stress secure chat functionalities and encryption. Privacy could therefore play a more pronounced role in the use of these platforms.
The Durov brothers also founded VK, a Russian social networking service, back in 2006. The large majority of its users are based in Russia, Ukraine, and countries of the former USSR (Salikov, 2019: 90). Studies about VK (or VKontakte) are mainly focused on its use within Russia (cf., Urman, 2019). While Russian investigative authorities are assumed to have unhindered access to the service’s data and use it for state control, VK has also provided a crucial infrastructure for protest in Russian-speaking regions (Poupin, 2021). VK tends to be used in the West by individuals mistrustful of Western platforms or political surveillance of these platforms in the West (Voskresenskii, 2023). Anti-establishment views may therefore play a role here.
The social networking service Parler was founded in 2018. After a shutdown in 2023 owing to the acquisition by the media company Starboard, the website was relaunched at the beginning of 2024. Gettr is a microblogging site comparable to “X.” Jason Miller, a former advisor to Donald Trump, launched the site in 2021; it has since been used by prominent American conservatives (Paudel et al., 2022). Studies on both Parler and Gettr are rare and mostly focus on the content shared on the platform, rather than the characteristics of their users (cf., Aliapoulios et al., 2021; Karell et al., 2023; Mekacher et al., 2023; Park et al., 2024; Paudel et al., 2022). Both Parler and Gettr are social networking-focused platforms originally targeting US users, mostly on the political right. To use these platforms, political factors – like ideology – may play a more pronounced role. However, there is a lack of comparative research examining these alternative platforms.
Antecedents of alternative social media use
Some alternative social platforms, such as Parler, Gab, or Gettr, position themselves as bastions of free speech and rebels against – primarily liberal or left-wing – “censorship” (Kor-Sins, 2023). These platforms have been described as havens of far-right activism, extremism, and hate speech (Karell et al., 2023). A recent study of content moderation on Twitter and Facebook (Mosleh et al., 2024) based on data collected in 2020 argues that established social media platforms, in fact, disproportionally ban or block right-wing users or content, but that this skew is primarily due to content running afoul of community guidelines (like hate speech).
Aliapoulios et al. (2021) find evidence that a large segment of the Parler user base identifies as conservative. Both Parler and Gettr have been promoted by conservative public figures in the United States (Paudel et al., 2022). Stocking et al. (2022) find that, in 2022, a majority of those consuming news on Parler, Rumble, Telegram, or Truth Social identify as Republican. According to a survey by Kelm et al. (2023: 477), German users of Telegram tend to be young and lean right. Urman and Katz (2022) show that far-right actors use Telegram groups to recreate similar structures from previously used mainstream platforms. We therefore propose that right-wing individuals will be especially drawn to the use of alternative social media platforms. These platforms hold promise for social interactions, networking, and community building among right-wing individuals, in particular.
H1. Right-wing users are more likely to use alternative social media platforms.
Previous research indicates that adoption of alternative social media may partly be driven by necessity – more specifically, by deplatforming from large, established social media. Dehghan and Nagappa (2022) describe that the platform Gab has grown in spurts whenever a major political event, like the riots following the 2020 US presidential elections or the COVID-19 pandemic, resulted in stricter content moderation on established platforms. Studies on user migration following deplatforming from established social media indicate that users remain politically engaged and even construct new “communities of grievance” on alternative platforms (Jasser et al., 2023: 1740). After Parler was deplatformed post-January 6, its users migrated to other alternative platforms like Gab or Telegram (Buntain et al., 2023; Horta Ribeiro et al., 2023). This indicates that users conceive of these alternative platforms as substitutes, or, as Rogers (2020) terms it, an “alternative social media ecosystem” (p. 218).
We examine the role of anti-establishment views in the use of alternative social media platforms. Anti-establishment views appear common on alternative platforms, partly because these platforms position themselves in opposition to more established alternatives (Gehl, 2017; Kor-Sins, 2023). Those with anti-establishment beliefs particularly dislike the content moderation practices of established social media (Jang et al., 2024). A sense of grievance among those migrating to alternative platforms contribute to anti-establishment views, as these users feel unjustly persecuted by elites (Dowling, 2023; Jasser et al., 2023). In a study of Telegram and Gab, Dowling (2023) finds that alt-right communities consider themselves unjustly excluded from the democratic process. Shaughnessy et al. (2024) posit that users adopt alternative social media platforms to curate political content that is more salient on these platforms, including content with an anti-establishment bent (Gehl, 2017; Kor-Sins, 2023).
H2. Anti-establishment views positively relate to the use of alternative social media platforms.
Mistrust of established social media platform’s surveillance and data harvesting practices is not specific to the realm of politics nor to the political right. In fact, there is a prominent strand of critique of “surveillance capitalism” (Zuboff, 2019) or “data capitalism” (West, 2019) offered from a progressive vantage point. These authors criticize how digital platforms collect vast amount of data and commodify the characteristics and interests of their users, often in an opaque and disempowering manner (Draper and Turow, 2019). Large social media platforms are charged with fostering privacy resignation and even cynicism among their users (Hoffmann et al., 2016). Many users report substantial privacy concerns when using large social media platforms (Lee and Yuan, 2020), and trust in established social media’s data stewardship is low (Business Insider, 2022).
In contrast, some alternative platforms are eager to highlight their privacy functionalities: Messaging services like Telegram and Signal provide end-to-end encryption. On Telegram, users can enable an auto-delete timer to erase their messages or hide their phone numbers to chat anonymously with others. Telegram promises to protect users’ data from third parties like government agencies (Telegram, 2024). Signal even refrains from storing encrypted messages on its servers altogether. Privacy concerns may, therefore, motivate the use of alternative social media platforms independent of ideology or anti-establishment views.
H3. Privacy concerns positively relate to the use of alternative social media platforms.
Aside from political ideology, anti-establishment views, and privacy concerns, we take two additional variables into consideration: political efficacy and digital skills. A recent meta-analysis (Boulianne et al., 2023) found that political efficacy is positively related to digital media use – information/news and online expression, in particular. The literature discusses two potential causal relationships: digital media use driving political efficacy, or political efficacy predicting digital media use (cf., Halpern et al., 2017; Kenski and Stroud, 2006). Boulianne et al.’s (2023) analysis presents evidence for the latter causal flow. The alternative social media platforms examined in this study are often framed as a refuge for political engagement (cf., Jasser et al., 2023; Rauchfleisch and Kaiser, 2024; Rogers, 2020). In a survey of US users of alternative social media, Stocking et al. (2022) find that discussions about current events are important motives of use, indicating a high level of political engagement. We therefore propose the following hypothesis:
H4. Political efficacy positively relates to the use of alternative social media platforms.
Finally, in digital divide research, skills are seen as critical for explaining usage of digital technologies, such as social media (Blank and Lutz, 2017; Hargittai, 2020; Van Deursen and Van Dijk, 2011). Digital skills encompass skills in operating soft- and hardware, navigating the Internet, and engaging with online content (Van Deursen and Van Dijk, 2011). Both passive and active uses of social media are positively related to digital skills (Correa, 2010; Hargittai and Walejko, 2008; Schradie, 2013). These insights also apply to political uses of social media (Blank, 2013; Hoffmann et al., 2015). Users with more digital skills are more playful in exploring digital technologies and exhibit a wider variety of digital media uses (Hargittai and Hinnant, 2008). We therefore propose that individuals with higher levels of digital skills are more likely to explore novel digital services such as alternative social media platforms.
H5. Digital skills positively relate to use of alternative social media platforms.
When testing these relationships, we control for age, gender, and education. Figure 1 presents the resulting research model.
Research model.
We examine these hypotheses in five countries. We use a similar case approach (Seawright and Gerring, 2008), choosing countries that have similar macro-level characteristics as large, Western, developed democracies with a similarly high degree of Internet and social media usage (Newman et al., 2024). According to Freedom House (2024), all five countries achieve similar political freedom scores and “freedom on the Net” scores. However, legal frameworks for data protection differ between the five countries, with Germany and France being subject to the relatively stringent EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and national laws applying to/in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States (cf., De Bruin, 2022). Institutional trust varies somewhat among the examined countries, with Canada scoring relatively high (Edelman, 2025), as do levels of political polarization, with high levels in the United States and France (V-Dem, 2025). The roles of privacy, anti-establishment views, and ideology may thus differ between the five countries. However, given the lack of previous research on use of these alternative platforms in the examined countries, we do not propose specific hypotheses. Rather, we pose the following research question:
RQ. Are there cross-national differences in the relationships among our key variables and the use of alternative social media platforms?
Methods
This study uses survey data gathered in five countries in January and February of 2023 (n = 7500). The sample is based on an online panel with quotas in place to ensure representation of the population in each country (sex, age, education). The survey was administered by Kantar Group to 1500 people each from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and Germany. The data and replication files are available at: https://osf.io/s5k48/overview?view_only=eb086e0da52b4fe1a89f3492dec4fd8c.
The dependent variable is the use of alternative social media platforms. We asked, “During the past 12 months, have you used any of the following: a) Telegram, b) Signal (Messenger), c) VK, d) Gettr, and e) Parler?” (no/yes). We present some platform-specific statistics, but given the extremely small numbers involved, we decided to create a variable based on whether respondents reported using any of the social media platforms (0/1) when conducting our multivariate analysis. Based on this five-country survey, 1530 respondents (20.4%) used at least one of these social media platforms.
Political ideology was assessed with a self-placement question based on a scale of 0 (Left) to 10 (Right) with moderates, “don’t knows” and “neither left nor right” coded as 5 (cf., Kubin and von Sikorski, 2021). We asked, “In politics, people sometimes talk of left and right. Where would you place YOURSELF on this scale? Note: sometimes people refer to the left as liberal and to the right as conservative.”
To measure anti-establishment views, we asked about agreement (1 to 4) with the following six statements, then averaged the scores: (a) The politicians need to follow the will of the people; (b) The people, and not the politicians, should make the most important political decisions; (c) I would rather be represented by an ordinary citizen than by a professional politician; (d) I think many very important things happen in the world, which the public is never informed about; (e) I think that politicians usually do not tell us the true motives for their decisions; and (f) I think that there are secret organizations that greatly influence political decisions. These questions cover two of the three dimensions of anti-establishment views (populism and conspiracy, but not Manichean views; Enders and Uscinski, 2021). We use different items for populism (a subset of items from Akkerman et al., 2014) and conspiracy beliefs (a subset of items from Bruder et al., 2013), reflecting measurement approaches in those subfields.
To measure privacy concerns, we asked about level of concern (1–5) with the following four statements, then averaged the scores: (a) Social media companies insufficiently protecting personal data (information leakage), (b) Social media companies sharing personal data with government agencies, (c) Social media companies selling personal data to political groups, and (d) Social media companies selling personal data to corporations to help them sell products and services to you (adapted from Lutz and Ranzini, 2017).
To measure political efficacy (see Boulianne et al., 2023), we asked about agreement (1–4) with the following five statements, then averaged the scores: (a) People like me can influence government; (b) I consider myself well-qualified to participate in politics; (c) Working as a group, people can influence government; (d) I have a pretty good understanding of political issues; and (e) I feel that I am better informed about politics than most people. To measure digital skills, we asked respondents to rate their understanding of a series of digital concepts: hashtag, deep fake, algorithm, and meme (adapted from Hargittai, 2020). Respondents selected responses from 1 (no understanding) to 5 (full understanding).
Gender was coded as female = 1, male = 0, and other = missing. Education was assessed based on a series of categories: high school or less, some college, bachelor’s degree, and more than a bachelor’s degree. Age was assessed in a series of age groups, as part of considering whether there is a non-linear role of age.
Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics of these variables. Table 6 in Appendix 1 presents a Pearson’s correlation matrix. This correlational analysis serves to rule out multi-collinearity issues but also helps untangle the relationships among the key predictors. In particular, anti-establishment views and right-wing ideology are not highly correlated (r = .106, p < .001).
Descriptive statistics by country.
Results
Before we discuss our research model, we present some descriptive findings. Table 2 presents the country-specific usage rates of the examined platforms. We find that Telegram stands out as the most popular platform, especially in the United States (17.4%) and Germany (16.8%), followed by Signal, again especially in Germany (12.1%) and in the United States (8.7%). The other platforms are rarely used. Approximately 4.7% of respondents in the United States and France use Parler. Overall, VK, Gettr, and Parler have higher usage in the United States than other countries. Use of any alternative social media use is highest in Germany (26.7%) and in the United States (25.3%).
Use of alternative social media platforms.
Table 3 reports the correlations among the uses of these alternative social media platforms. The darker the color, the larger the correlation, meaning a co-occurrence of platform use. We find that, on the one hand, use of Parler, Gettr, and VK correlate with each other (approximately .200). In addition, Telegram and Signal (.205) uses also are correlated. Parler, Gettr, and VK can be considered social networking sites, particularly popular among specific communities, while Telegram and Signal combine social networking functionalities with instant messaging.
Heatmap of Pearson correlations among alternative social media platforms.
n = 7503, all correlations are significant at the .001 level. Table 6 in Appendix 1 has the full correlation matrix for all platforms and all the independent variables.
Table 4 presents the regression analyses of our research model. We first present the results for the pooled sample, before examining country differences. Those who identify as right-wing are more likely to use alternative social media platforms, confirming H1. In Table 6 in Appendix 1, we document that the correlation between ideology and usage is smallest for Signal (r = .054, p < .001), but similar in size for all other platforms.
Use of any alternative social media platform.
Male participants, those aged 55 or more, and the US sample are the reference groups for this analysis. Odds ratio are presented. 1.00 refers to a null relationship; numbers above 1.00 are positive relationships and numbers below 1.00 are negative relationships.
Contrary to H2, anti-establishment views do not relate to using alternative social media platforms in the pooled sample (Table 4). In Table 6 in Appendix 1, we find a higher correlation between Telegram and anti-establishment views (r = .076, p < .001), compared to other platforms. In addition, Table 6 in Appendix 1 shows that right-wing ideology is a stronger covariate of platform use (alternative social media platforms and each of the five platforms under study) than anti-establishment views.
Privacy concerns do not relate to the use of alternative social media platforms in the pooled sample, so we reject H3 (Table 4). The correlation analysis in Table 6 in Appendix 1 shows significant positive correlations for all platforms except Gettr, but the effect sizes are very small, with the largest correlations for Telegram (r = .057, p < .001). Table 7 in Appendix 1 shows a cross-tabulation for privacy concerns and usage. It indicates a non-linear relationship, where those with medium privacy concerns (levels two to four) are most likely to use alternative platforms.
Those who report higher levels of political efficacy are more likely to use alternative social media platforms, confirming H4 (Table 4). As expected, digital skills (H5) positively relate to use of alternative social media platforms in the pooled sample. In Table 6 in Appendix 1, digital skills and political efficacy are consistently positive and significant across the five platforms. Table 8 in Appendix 1 confirms a linear relationship between digital skills and usage.
Beyond our research hypotheses and question, we find that women are less likely to use alternative social media platforms in the pooled sample. Those who are more educated are more likely to use alternative social media platforms. Compared to those aged 55 or more, younger age groups are more likely to use alternative social media platforms.
With regard to our research question on country differences, the regression analysis confirms that, compared to US respondents (reference group), respondents from the United Kingdom and Canada are less likely to use these alternative social media platforms. However, those in Germany are more likely to use alternative social media platforms, compared to US respondents based on the multivariate model. France respondents do not differ from US respondents in their likelihood of using alternative social media platforms in the multivariate model.
We find that right-wing ideology (H1) consistently positively relates to the use of alternative social media platforms in all five countries. For anti-establishment views (H2) we find some country differences. There are no significant relationships in the pooled sample, in the United Kingdom, France, and Canada. However, in the United States, anti-establishment views negatively relate to the use of these platforms, whereas in Germany, we find a positive relationship. Privacy concerns (H3) do not significantly relate to alternative social media use in any of the examined countries. Conversely, political efficacy (H4) consistently shows a significant positive relationship in all five countries. Digital skills (H5) positively relate to the use of alternative social media platforms in the United States, France, and Germany, but not in the United Kingdom and Canada. While the identified age relationship is consistently statistically significant in all five countries, gender differences are not statistically significant in Canada and Germany, and education is not significantly related to platform use in France and Germany.
Discussion
Previous studies of alternative social media platforms have focused on the content shared on these platforms, like the level of toxicity or the prevalence of hate speech (Aliapoulios et al., 2021; Karell et al., 2023; Park et al., 2024). Fewer studies focus on the users of these platforms. Some point out that deplatforming from large, established platforms drives the usage of alternative platforms (Horta Ribeiro et al., 2023; Jasser et al., 2023; Rogers, 2020). Initial studies indicate that users of alternative platforms tend to be young, male, and right-leaning (Kelm et al., 2023; Lima et al., 2018; Stocking et al., 2022). This study focuses on three antecedents of the usage of alternative social media platforms: political ideology, anti-establishment views, and privacy concerns. It is the first cross-national study comparatively testing a model of usage of these platforms. Our study shows that politically efficacious, digitally skilled, mostly male, and younger right-wing individuals are particularly drawn to alternative social media platforms.
We confirm that those on the right are more likely to use these platforms, but the role of anti-establishment views is inconsistent across countries. For all platforms, right-wing ideology is a stronger covariate of usage compared to anti-establishment views. The attraction of alternative social media to right-wing users may be due to the content available on these platforms. Shaughnessy et al. (2024) argue that users seek alternative social media to curate platform-specific content. Widjaya and Smith (2023) confirm that the content shared on alternative and established social media differs widely. In a study of US users, Stocking et al. (2022) find that they find news on alternative platforms that they would not otherwise see (84%). This motive is especially relevant to right-wing individuals. Zhang et al. (2024: 3) state: “Alt-tech platforms are not on the fringe; rather, they might play a non-negligible role in the media system that, paradoxically, their users criticize.”
Another reason for right-wing users to flock to alternative social media may be platform affordances and a sense of community. Both Urman and Katz (2022) and Jasser et al. (2023) highlight how users migrating to alternative platforms (re-)create communities there, often infused by a sense of injustice and persecution. Boulianne et al. (2024) explain right-wing people’s uptake of social media as a response to perceptions about the left dominating mainstream news and platforms. Again, in their study of US users, Stocking et al. (2022) find that 65% say they have found a community on the alternative platform, and a majority say they find discussions mostly friendly. This may partly be due to the political homogeneity of these discussions (Mekacher et al., 2023).
Privacy concerns do not predict use of alternative platforms in the overall regression model. While contested, research on the privacy paradox argues that users do not significantly adapt their platform usage to their privacy concerns (cf., Kokolakis, 2017). However, we find some evidence for a non-linear relationship where those with medium-level privacy concerns are most likely to use alternative platforms. Possibly, users weigh their privacy concerns against the inconvenience of switching to a new platform, along the lines of the privacy calculus model (Trepte et al., 2017). At a certain level of concerns, users may choose to use purportedly more privacy-friendly alternative platforms – however, at high levels of privacy concerns, they may also mistrust these alternative platforms.
We also find that anti-establishment views do not relate to platform use in the regression model. This indicates that users do not primarily seek out these platforms to avoid surveillance or due to mistrust of established platforms. Rather, previous studies show that users of alternative platforms also use established platforms (Stocking et al., 2022). Alternative social media platforms do not constitute a radical alternative, but rather a complement to established platforms, offering somewhat different content and a sense of community – especially to those on the right. Future studies should examine if changes to community guidelines on an established platform such as “X,” which are welcomed on the political right, will lead to a return of alternative platform users.
Digital skills positively relate to the usage of alternative social media platforms, independent of political ideology. Digital skills contribute to a playful and explorative use of digital technologies, and to a wider variety of digital media uses (Hargittai and Hinnant, 2008). In our sample, digital skills are positively correlated with privacy concerns (Table 6 in Appendix 1). More skilled users may be more aware of privacy risks, which could contribute to the use of privacy-friendly platforms. We also add to research linking political efficacy and social media use (Boulianne et al., 2023; Halpern et al., 2017). Due to their political connotations (resistance to censorship and surveillance), alternative platforms are often examined in the context of political uses. Freelon et al. (2020) even characterize the use of these platforms as a type of right-wing activism. It is thus unsurprising that political efficacy relates to alternative platform use.
This study is subject to some limitations. We provide correlational evidence that cannot speak to causality. We constructed our sample to be representative of the overall population based on age, gender, and education. This allows us to explore the use of alternative platforms, but our sub-samples of platform users are small. We cannot run platform-specific models, especially for each country due to the small sample sizes. For example, only nine German respondents (of 1500) used Parler. While we contextualize our findings in terms of the political implications, with such small samples, we cannot go into details about the specific types of uses of these platforms. Future studies of alternative platform users should therefore specifically sample this population. We find that the usage of alternative platforms correlates, but especially of the services with instant messaging functionalities (Telegram and Signal), on the one hand, and services focusing more on social networking (VK, Gettr, and Parler), on the other hand. Future studies should explore platform distinctions based on their specific affordances (cf., Boulianne et al., 2024; Mitchelstein et al., 2021). The explained variance of our regression models is limited, especially in the German sample. There are clearly additional antecedents of alternative platform usage that need to be explored.
Finally, in terms of our research question on country differences, we find that use of alternative social media platforms is high in the United States, but also Germany. The types of platforms used in these countries differ somewhat. Gettr, Parler, and VK are more widely used in the United States than the other four countries. This may be unsurprising in the case of Gettr and Parler, which emerged in the United States in the context of local discourse around deplatforming and censorship. VK may also have benefited from this discourse. Compared to other platforms, Telegram and Signal are more popular in all five countries, but especially in the United States and Germany. In Germany, this may partly be due to the use of these platforms among right-wing groups (Kelm et al., 2023). Looking at predictors of usage, we find a high level of consistency across the five examined countries. Specifically, the positive role of political efficacy, the null effects of privacy concerns, and the positive effects of right-wing ideology are consistent across countries. As noted, digital skills do not relate to alternative platform use in the United Kingdom and Canada, but matter for the pooled sample and other country-specific samples. In contrast, education differences are stronger in the United Kingdom and Canada and thus, education may be capturing the role of digital skills to some degree, since education and digital skills are significantly correlated. The United Kingdom and Canada are the countries with the lowest overall use of alternative social media in our sample. The use of Telegram and Signal, especially, is relatively rare (less than 10%) in these two countries (Table 2). Usage of these two platforms, however, is relatively strongly correlated with digital skills (Table 6 in Appendix 1). Therefore, this distinctive finding may be due more to platform characteristics than the prevalence of digital skills. We should note that the explained variance of our model differs between the country samples, with a relatively low level of explained variance in Germany. This is mostly due to relatively small effects of age in Germany compared to the other countries.
We also find that anti-establishment views were only positively related to usage in Germany, which may be due to distinctive political developments or discourse in that country. Specifically, Telegram has emerged as a popular platform for anti-establishment discourse during the pandemic and is widely used in right-wing populist circles (cf. Kelm et al., 2023). Surprisingly, anti-establishment views negatively relate to alternative platform use in the United States. This speaks to findings from a US Pew study, showing that users of alternative platforms often also use established platforms, have rarely been deplatformed, and mostly seek complementary content for their information diet (Stocking et al., 2022), rather than a space for oppositional activism. Again, future research should explore additional antecedents as specific motives for usage of alternative social media, to better understand their role in Western democracies’ information ecosystem (Zhang et al., 2024). These efforts should include a wide(r) range of alternative social media platforms, including those more explicitly addressing progressive users (Gehl, 2015).
Footnotes
Appendix 1
Contingency table digital skills and usage.
| Digital skills | Total | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low (level 2 or less) | Medium (more than 2, less than 4) | High (more than 4) | |||
| Non-usage | n | 2177 | 2632 | 1164 | 5973 |
| % | 92.8% | 76.9% | 67.2% | 79.6% | |
| Usage | n | 170 | 792 | 568 | 1530 |
| % | 7.2% | 23.1% | 32.8% | 20.4% | |
| Total | 2347 | 3424 | 1732 | 7503 | |
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant No. 435-2019-04-94).
Ethics approval
The survey received human-subject ethics approval prior to data collection (File No. 102022), according to Canada’s Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPS).
Data availability
Data and replication files will be made available on Figshare upon acceptance of the article so that any changes in the analysis during the review process can be reflected in the published documentation.