Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok – social media have become an important tool in public communication during the election campaign. Policy advisor Dr. Bendix Hügelmann gives the German top candidate: inside, however, a mixed report.
The recent election campaigns of the later US presidents Barack Obama in 2008 and Donald Trump in 2016 have shown what influence social media can have on election results with moderate success.
There is no surge in professionalism
Political scientist Dr. Bendix Hügelmann advises parties, associations and companies on issues of digital communication and campaign management. Even if the parties are now investing more money in the online election campaign, the communications expert misses a surge in professionalism. At the municipal level in particular, the digitization of the election campaign often fails due to technical barriers to understanding.
The candidates are now represented much more frequently on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and even Tiktok, but rarely use these channels as they are intended. Social media offer the opportunity to build loyal communities over the years. According to Hügelmann, influencers manage to become relevant public figures simply through the participation of their audience. “Politicians seem to have a hard time with it.” The digital channels are not about replicating the public image, but about adding a private component to it.
Digital election campaign of the candidate for chancellor: inside
The political scientist has already accompanied several candidate teams in the past and has observed a recurring pattern: the campaigns often activate their platforms too late. The “community building phase” already takes place in the first three years of a legislative period. Even after this election, however, many profiles would switch to radio silence again for a few months, he suspects.
Hügelmann primarily takes the three candidates for chancellor: Olaf Scholz (SPD), Armin Laschet (CDU) and Annalena Baerbock (Alliance 90 / The Greens) into account. You would appear in a rather “impersonal, rigid form” on Instagram. You usually look in vain for personal components. The profiles are a contrast to the general appearance of the platform.
Özdemir, Lindner and Söder: Masters of self-presentation
However, there are also a few examples: In addition to Christian Lindner, who already successfully made a personal presentation on Instagram in the 2017 federal election campaign, Hügelmann also finds the digital presence of Cem Özdemir and Robert Habeck (both Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen) and Markus Söder (CSU) ) largely successful.
Politicians who reveal a lot of private information earn a lot of malice and ridicule, especially on Twitter, but in most cases they can look forward to increasing popularity ratings among the population. Thanks to his digital self-marketing, Cem Özdemir has succeeded in gaining 72,000 Instagram subscribers since the last federal election. The negative tone and the “decontextualized strategic misunderstanding” are not desirable, but they are not new phenomena and have always been part of the analog election campaign, according to Hügelmann.
AfD successful on Facebook and YouTube
Smaller parties in particular seem to dominate social media. The opposition parties AfD, Greens, Left and FDP have a larger following on most platforms than the governing parties SPD and CDU. In addition to their younger target group, this is also due to their special position in the digital discourse. Since they address a smaller base, demands and promises can often be made more pointed. But: “I’ve hardly seen any negative campaigning in this country so far. If you ignore the SPD’s matryoshka spot and the Union’s reaction, it’s relatively harmless compared to other nations,” says Hügelmann
Even if the AfD gathers most subscribers behind it on Facebook and Youtube, the political scientist is disturbed by the narrative of a particularly successful digital right. At the beginning of an emergency situation, the AfD recognized that it would not get the public it needed to generate new members in the conventional way. In the meantime, however, the digital success of right-wing populists has also stagnated.
Likes and clicks do not give any conclusions about the outcome of the election
While the hot phase of the analogue election campaign is slowly picking up speed, in the remaining three weeks until the federal elections there will most likely hardly be any change in the perception of parties and their candidates. If nothing goes wrong, the individual profiles will only gain popularity slightly due to the greater media interest.
Political scientist Hügelmann is unable to give a tip on the outcome of the election. Because even if a successful digital election campaign strategy certainly does not reduce the candidates’ chances of getting a place in the German Bundestag, no election results can be derived from followers, clicks and likes.
Read the full interview on stern + here
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