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 by a wide margin. According to pollster infratest dimap, 38% of the 18 to 24-year-olds voted AfD.
Given TikTok’s popularity among young users, this could be linked to the strong presence of AfD content on the platform.
“We believe that the AfD’s success on TikTok very likely contributed to the AfD’s electoral success,” Roland Verwiebe, a social scientist and professor at the faculty of economics and social sciences at the University of Potsdam, told DW.
“Half of all 16-24 year olds only get their political information from TikTok,” he said: “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).
For their analysis, the researchers from Potsdam 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.”
Holy shit they still dont get what the problem is
TikTok and X need to be banned
A good education could help.
Tip: Always look into who sponsered the research. Might tell you alot about the outcome.
Well, you don’t say!
Anyone who believes that the CCP does not use TikTok as a weapon against the hated western societies to destabilize them must be really naive.
It has to be ANYTHING ELSE than imported radical islamists. It just HAS to be something else. My god this is so retarded.
I think current politicians in power helped much much more than tiktok.
ITT: the types of people targeted by what the article talks about, exhibiting the gullibility that makes them targets in the first place
Lol
What a silly thing to say. Of course there is far right content on it. There is far left content too and everything in between because that’s where people hang out. Is not the fault of the public space that people in it are having all kind of discussions some of which you don’t like. The solution is not to close the public space.
They’re really trying to tell you that TikTok is at fault here 😂
Likely…. lol… we all been knowing
LOL.
The status quo sure does seem upset over the AfD winning a single state election.
social media is objectively the worst thing to ever happen to humanity
Yeh the lack of moderation is crazy , they don’t block anything you report
All that to give the kids in their edgy phase a bit more time so they can vote AFD
No shit.
No shit, just make a new account set it up as a young male and see what you get.
I’ve seen more fake propaganda on Facebook than I see on TikTok. They should target all content creators for truthfulness, including the news industry if they fear citizens are being misled.
Social media will destroy democracy. A good start is Brazil banning Musk’s abomination. That is the only way to disrupt these bad actors.
It’s never the establishment’s fault.
I honestly don’t think it’s being manipulated by China to destabilize the world, as some have suggested. I think it’s simply a double-edged sword. It wants you on the app, so if you’re already right-leaning, it will send you down an alt-right rabbit hole. If you’re left-leaning, it will also send you down that rabbit hole, but the left, generally speaking, is less radical and more divided. Hence, the right seems and can be stronger, depending on the country or state.
Another good thing about TikTok is that it keeps you using the app by showing you things you like or are interested in, as opposed to Twitter, which now seems to show you engagement baits and things you hate in addition to who you follow.
And honestly, I’d take this any day over Elon’s alt-right playground. I block at least one popular account per day that shoves racist or alt-right content in my face on X, the Everything App.
Tiktok helps anyone in elections. It spreads messages, thats what it does. You just dont like the people who were elected.
Hey guys, I got a small pimple on my ass.
Is this ?
a) far right propaganda
b) fascism
c) dictatorship/fascism because you didn’t vote for my favourite party
d) voters were idiots. Basement dwellers of Reddit are geniuses.
e) We all MUST love that one religion… because their oil money funds this website
I really don’t know how the government managed to convinced everyone that censorship and being moderated and monitored at all times is a good thing.
Ten years ago people would have been against any of this.
We know, we all know, we’ve heard it a dozen times now. Can we please start doing something about it already?
We wouldn’t accept a Chinese, Russian, Islamist or Neonazi propaganda newspaper being delivered “for free” to every western household, why are we too blind to do something about this shitty app? Are politicians afraid to lose young voters? Well, guess what: you apparently already lost a lot of them by doing nothing, maybe switch up your strategy…
28 comments
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 by a wide margin. According to pollster infratest dimap, 38% of the 18 to 24-year-olds voted AfD.
Given TikTok’s popularity among young users, this could be linked to the strong presence of AfD content on the platform.
“We believe that the AfD’s success on TikTok very likely contributed to the AfD’s electoral success,” Roland Verwiebe, a social scientist and professor at the faculty of economics and social sciences at the University of Potsdam, told DW.
“Half of all 16-24 year olds only get their political information from TikTok,” he said: “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).
For their analysis, the researchers from Potsdam 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.”
Holy shit they still dont get what the problem is
TikTok and X need to be banned
A good education could help.
Tip: Always look into who sponsered the research. Might tell you alot about the outcome.
Well, you don’t say!
Anyone who believes that the CCP does not use TikTok as a weapon against the hated western societies to destabilize them must be really naive.
It has to be ANYTHING ELSE than imported radical islamists. It just HAS to be something else. My god this is so retarded.
I think current politicians in power helped much much more than tiktok.
ITT: the types of people targeted by what the article talks about, exhibiting the gullibility that makes them targets in the first place
Lol
What a silly thing to say. Of course there is far right content on it. There is far left content too and everything in between because that’s where people hang out. Is not the fault of the public space that people in it are having all kind of discussions some of which you don’t like. The solution is not to close the public space.
They’re really trying to tell you that TikTok is at fault here 😂
Likely…. lol… we all been knowing
LOL.
The status quo sure does seem upset over the AfD winning a single state election.
social media is objectively the worst thing to ever happen to humanity
Yeh the lack of moderation is crazy , they don’t block anything you report
All that to give the kids in their edgy phase a bit more time so they can vote AFD
No shit.
No shit, just make a new account set it up as a young male and see what you get.
I’ve seen more fake propaganda on Facebook than I see on TikTok. They should target all content creators for truthfulness, including the news industry if they fear citizens are being misled.
Social media will destroy democracy. A good start is Brazil banning Musk’s abomination. That is the only way to disrupt these bad actors.
It’s never the establishment’s fault.
I honestly don’t think it’s being manipulated by China to destabilize the world, as some have suggested. I think it’s simply a double-edged sword. It wants you on the app, so if you’re already right-leaning, it will send you down an alt-right rabbit hole. If you’re left-leaning, it will also send you down that rabbit hole, but the left, generally speaking, is less radical and more divided. Hence, the right seems and can be stronger, depending on the country or state.
Another good thing about TikTok is that it keeps you using the app by showing you things you like or are interested in, as opposed to Twitter, which now seems to show you engagement baits and things you hate in addition to who you follow.
And honestly, I’d take this any day over Elon’s alt-right playground. I block at least one popular account per day that shoves racist or alt-right content in my face on X, the Everything App.
Tiktok helps anyone in elections. It spreads messages, thats what it does. You just dont like the people who were elected.
Hey guys, I got a small pimple on my ass.
Is this ?
a) far right propaganda
b) fascism
c) dictatorship/fascism because you didn’t vote for my favourite party
d) voters were idiots. Basement dwellers of Reddit are geniuses.
e) We all MUST love that one religion… because their oil money funds this website
I really don’t know how the government managed to convinced everyone that censorship and being moderated and monitored at all times is a good thing.
Ten years ago people would have been against any of this.
We know, we all know, we’ve heard it a dozen times now. Can we please start doing something about it already?
We wouldn’t accept a Chinese, Russian, Islamist or Neonazi propaganda newspaper being delivered “for free” to every western household, why are we too blind to do something about this shitty app? Are politicians afraid to lose young voters? Well, guess what: you apparently already lost a lot of them by doing nothing, maybe switch up your strategy…