TikTok is to blame for the rise of the far-right in Germany, say researchers
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TikTok likely helped far right in elections: researchers – DW – 09/02/2024
https://www.dw.com/en/tiktok-likely-helped-far-right-in-elections-researchers/a-70114669
Below are graphs showing the results of the state elections in Thuringia (top) and Saxony (bottom) held in 2024. The AfD (blue bar graph) became the largest party in the Thuringian election and the second largest party in Saxony, just behind the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) , the largest party, with the right wing gaining strong support in both states.
According to polling company Infratest dimap, the AfD is overwhelmingly popular among young voters aged 18 to 24. Given that TikTok's main users are also in this age group, experts say the AfD's popularity is due to its strong presence on the app.
'We believe that the AfD's success on TikTok very likely contributed to its election victory,' said Roland Verwiebe, a professor at the University of Potsdam and coordinator of a project monitoring German political parties' activity on TikTok. 'The majority of 16-24 year olds get their political information exclusively from TikTok, making the platform highly influential.'
To analyze the relationship between TikTok and young voters, the project team created fictitious TikTok profiles of users born in 2006 living in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg.
They analyzed more than 75,000 videos that appeared in feeds in the weeks leading up to the election and found that, on average, nine videos related to the AfD appeared per week, while just over one video related to the CDU or the recently launched populist party Zahra-Wagenknecht Union (BSW) appeared per week, with videos from other parties barely appearing in the feed.
The number of videos that appeared in the feeds was unrelated to the number produced by each political party: for example, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) produced many more videos than the AfD in the eight weeks before the election, yet these videos appeared far less in young people's feeds.
Verwiebe believes there are two reasons why the AfD has gained support on TikTok: 'The network of right-wing influencers with extensive connections on TikTok is sharing and helping to spread AfD content,' and 'the majority of AfD candidates are also active on TikTok as individuals.'
The AfD's popularity among young people is not limited to local elections: in the June 2024 European Parliament elections, 16% of young people in Germany voted for the AfD, three times the percentage of votes from young people in the previous election held in 2019. According to Verwiebe, the results of this local election reflect this trend.
The AfD-related content that Verwiebe and her colleagues viewed in their TikTok study ranged from clips of political speeches to emotive videos on topics like immigration, to seemingly non-political content like travel and cooking videos.
From this point of view, Mr. Verwiebe said, 'The AfD is very good at using TikTok's entertainment value and it shows how well they understand TikTok's strategy.'
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