TikTok likely helped far right in elections: researchers

To what extent did TikTok help Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) achieve record results in two regional elections?

The AfD emerged as the strongest party among young voters between the ages of 18 and 24 by a wide margin, according to pollster infratest dimap.

Given TikTok's popularity among young users, this could be linked to the strong presence of AfD content on the platform, said Roland Verwiebe, a professor at the University of Potsdam and one of the coordinators of a project monitoring the activity of German parties on TikTok.   

"We believe that the AfD's success on TikTok very likely contributed to the AfD's electoral success," Verwiebe told DW.  

"Half of all 16-24 year olds only get their political information from TikTok," he added: "That makes the platform extraordinarily influential." 

In Sunday's elections in the eastern states of Saxony and Thuringia the AfD garnered the best results of any far-right party since World War II. The AfD alone secured more than double the votes of the three parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition government combined — the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), the environmentalist Greens, and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP). 

AfD dominance in user feeds 

The researchers in Potsdam conducted an analysis of user data, which suggests that in the weeks leading up to the vote, AfD-related content reached a much larger audience on the social media platform than content related to other political parties. 

For their analysis, they created 30 fictitious TikTok profiles of users born in 2006 and living in Thuringia, Saxony, and Brandenburg, where regional elections were about to be held.

 They then analyzed more than 75,000 videos that appeared in their feeds during the weeks leading up to the election. 

On average, they found that users were shown nine videos per week with AfD content — compared to just over one video per week related to the center-right Christian Democratic Union or the newly formed populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), and significantly less content related to any other party. 

At the same time, the researchers observed that the number of videos appearing in user feeds did not correlate with the total amount of content created by the parties. 

"The SPD, for example, produced more videos than the AfD in the eight weeks before the state elections,” said Verwiebe, "but the party's videos were barely played in users' feeds." 

One reason could be that a network of well-connected right-wing influencers on TikTok share AfD content and help amplify it, according to Verwiebe; another could be that the majority of AfD candidates, more than any other party, are themselves active on the platform. 

The AfD has been more active on TikTok than any other political party in the German parliament, according to a June 2024 study by the Anne Frank Educational Center. 

Political analysts attribute the AfD's rising popularity among young voters, at least in part, to this social media presence.  

In the June 2024 European elections, 16% of young Germans voted for the AfD, tripling the party's share of this demographic compared to the last election five years ago. This trend was reflected in last weekend's regional elections, Verwiebe said.  

The pro-AfD content he and his co-researchers observed before the state elections varied widely, he added, ranging from clips of political speeches to emotional videos on topics such as immigration, and seemingly non-political content such as travel or cooking videos. 

"The AfD has mastered the entertaining nature of TikTok very well," he added. "They have understood the TikTok playbook very well." 

Edited by Rina Goldenberg

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