Study on the AfD: But not the social media party?

33 percent in Thuringia, 31 percent in Saxony, 29 percent in Brandenburg: The AfD emerged as the clear winner of the state elections in the eastern federal states. Experts and observers quickly provided the explanation for the high results: the party was the only one that moved the election campaign online. Their appearances on platforms like Tiktok or Instagram were much more structured and professional than those of their competitors. The AfD is the social media party in Germany.

A new one doubts this representation. A team of conflict researchers, political and data scientists analyzed the AfD’s social media election campaign in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg. They come to the conclusion: The presence in social networks alone cannot explain the AfD’s electoral success. In conversation with the star Study author Maik Fielitz explains why reducing the party’s election victories to its social media campaign falls short.

Mr. Fielitz, you and your colleagues have taken part in the state election campaigns AfD analyzed on social media in Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia. Is it true that the AfD is a “social media party”?
Both during the election campaign and afterwards, this description was used very freely in order to explain how the AfD’s electoral successes, particularly among young voters, can be explained. The important thing we found is that pure social media work on platforms like Tiktok did not play as big a role in this state election campaign as was often assumed by the public.

Why?
We found that the AfD’s social media presence only works when it is synchronized with offline actions. So when events are streamed and video material is created from an offline context at a meeting or rally. Only then did the strength of the AfD become apparent on social media. But most AfD candidates themselves seemed overwhelmed by all the possibilities that social networks offer.

Does that mean the AfD isn’t as big online as it is made out to be?
The AfD’s narrative is often adopted that it has digital dominance and that this can be directly translated into popularity at the ballot box. The AfD’s strength is too often attributed to the fact that it understands the platform particularly well, that its social media strategy is particularly sophisticated, and that it is the only way it can reach new target groups. These are attributions that do not apply, at least in the election campaigns in the three eastern federal states. Anyone who believes that the AfD’s performance on social networks was the decisive factor for its electoral success is falling short.

Some AfD members have been criticized for targeting very young users with their social media presence and thus pulling them into the right-wing corner.
It was noticeable that young target groups were hardly addressed in these election campaigns, especially via Tiktok. This contradicts public perception. But in this case you have to consider the context: Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg have an above-average population that is very rural. From this we can conclude that the party’s strategic focus was not so much on social media work. Others have taken that over.

You are talking about the AfD’s so-called “frontrunner”: right-wing influencers and networks that heavily advertise the party on social media.
The AfD invested much less money in its social media campaign in these election campaigns than other parties, which suggests that it has very good networks on these platforms that do the work for free. She can run fewer election advertisements because her messages end up on users’ timelines anyway.

Did the party benefit from these networks in all three federal states?
That was different in every federal state. Saxony stands out because we saw very strong competition there in the political arena with the right-wing extremist “Free Saxons”, which took away a lot of visibility from the AfD, especially in terms of internal mobilization on Telegram. In Brandenburg and Thuringia the connection to the apron was much closer. Here, new right-wing organizations from the Identitarian spectrum strongly supported the election campaign and partly helped to design it.

The appearances in the run-up to the EU election campaign around top candidate Maximilian Krah seemed very aggressive. Has the approach in the state election campaigns changed?
Krah’s social media campaign also polarized within the AfD and caused conflicts that contradicted the party’s desire for a united appearance. Although the campaigns in Thuringia were also focused on the top candidate Björn Höcke, one could see a certain reluctance in those around them, compared to Krah’s very turbulent European election campaign.

Which platform did the AfD use in the election campaigns and how?
Telegram was and is used for internal mobilization. Facebook was primarily used for posts such as home videos to create a certain level of closeness. And also to place targeted election advertising. X was used to appeal to the media and produce scandals.

YouTube, on the other hand, was relevant in that many election campaign appearances were streamed here, especially by streamers from the right-wing spectrum, who used the comment function to enable viewers to participate in the events to a certain extent without having been there themselves.

Tiktok is still a testing ground – also for the AfD. During the Eastern election campaigns, we could only see a good two dozen AfD accounts that used the platform professionally. Otherwise, the content was characterized by digital amateurism.

Nevertheless, the AfD seems to reach a lot of users. It is repeatedly reported that there are around three times as many people on Tiktok as all other parties combined. So does it use the platform more successfully than the competition?
There are several reasons for this. Parties from the right and right-wing extremist spectrum are traditionally early to adopt new platforms. On the one hand, this is because they have less access to traditional media and, on the other hand, because they can spread their theses as unfiltered as possible. The wide reach arises because the AfD’s content is shared more organically by the front-end organization. There are many more accounts that serve the party.

Why is that?
This may be the case for different reasons: because you are very closely connected to the party, because you want to provoke, or because you want to build up a certain level of visibility yourself. It is a shadow army of digital activists, which is evident, for example, in the fact that many fan accounts are created by certain politicians in the party. And these politicians, in turn, deliberately do not stop these fan accounts.

These are strategies that the AfD has practiced for years. It sets a polarizing topic. Then she uses constant repetition and an ‘instrumental’ relationship to truth to fuel it again and again. And through agreed activism online, it simulates a certain mass of supporters and thus the sovereignty of interpretation. Then the traditional media jumps in and helps the narrative gain even more reach.

So are the traditional media still allowing themselves to be influenced too much by the AfD scandals and jumping over these proverbial sticks?
This is a cycle that the traditional media has difficulty getting out of. Anything scandalous brings clicks and attention. But what would be good for society here would be a more distant relationship and not always being driven by the AfD.