The leaders of Germany's traditional parties are clearly nervous about the rise of populist parties.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) secured just over 30% of the vote in recent state elections in Thuringia and Saxony, which was partly attributed to the party's effectiveness at reaching first-time voters on TikTok.

Matthias Kettemann, an expert on internet regulation and media law at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, argues that it its impossible to say exactly what impact social media has in shaping public opinion and democratic decision-making processes more broadly.

However, what is clear is that more and more people are using social media and that there is a general trend toward polarization. "The parties on the far right and far left tend to do much better on social media because they tend to have easier stories to tell, which in turn foster engagement together with the amplification algorithms of the platforms," Kettemann told DW.

Observers are also wary of the growing influence of Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest man and CEO of the platform X, who was arguably Trump's greatest ally in his successful campaign to retake the US presidency.

After Germany's ruling coalition government collapsed on November 6, Musk repeatedly referred to Germany's center-left leaders as "fools."

Meanwhile, Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Robert Habeck, of Germany's Green Party, this week made a surprise comeback to the microblogging platform following a six-year break, saying he did not think it was right to leave X to the "loudmouths and populists."

Mudslinging rather than policy debates

"The most important problem is disinformation from the top," said Jörg Hassler, an expert in digital and political communication at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. He said political leaders now focus more on making personal attacks on their competitors or engage in debates on side issues like election dates.

During a debate in the Bundestag on Wednesday, center-right Christian Democrat (CDU) leader Friedrich Merz expressed his disgust at AI-generated fake videos about him that had been circulating online and shared on social media. "The fact that they are being posted and forwarded by Social Democrat lawmakers gives a taste of the kind of election campaign you are obviously prepared to run here in Germany," Merz said.

"The important issues are how well the economy does, whether people are able to get state welfare and so on, but it appears that politicians aren't interested in talking about those," said Kettemann.

While campaign tools developed in the US are subject to strict legal and regulatory limits in Germany, for example through data protection laws and laws around party financing, social media has become an important part of the hybrid media ecosystem, in which information loops between social media and traditional media outlets.

"You can't win elections on social media, but you can lose them," said Hassler. He pointed to the example of Armin Laschet, who ran as the CDU candidate for chancellor in the 2021 federal election. Laschet's campaign was effectively sunk after he was filmed laughing during a official visit to Rhein-Erft-Kreis, a region of Germany devastated by extreme flooding in July 2021. Outrage spread on X, then called Twitter, using the hashtag "#laschetlacht" ("#laschetlaughs").

For the first time in 2022, more German citizens said they mainly followed the news online rather than on television, as reported in the Reuters Institute annual survey for the Study of Journalism. According to the 2024 Media Study by German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF, only 7% of the German population uses X on a regular basis compared with Instagram (37%), Facebook (33%) and TikTok (18%).

Russia wants to 'exacerbate the polarization'

Another important factor in the upcoming federal election, said Kettemann says, will be the role of foreign actors using disinformation operations, for example bot farms and "dark campaigns" on messaging apps such as Telegram and WhatsApp to push certain narratives. Germany's populist AfD and the  leftist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW)have run on pro-Russia, socially conservative, anti-immigration and anti-climate protection platforms.

"We know for example that Russia much prefers certain political parties in Germany over others. They want to exacerbate the polarization tendencies within German society and that's a threat we should be keenly aware of in the run-up to the Bundestag election," said Hassler.

EU attempts to regulate social media

The EU has already introduced a comprehensive set of regulations for social media and digital marketplaces with the Digital Services Act (DSA) that aims to prevent illegal and harmful activities online, as well as the spread of disinformation.

In preliminary findings issued in July, EU regulators found X to be in breach of the DSA, stating that the blue check verification system "deceives users," that the platform was not in compliance with "required transparency on advertising" and "fails to provide access to its public data to researchers."

The challenge now will be to implement the legislation, said Kettemann, and that won't happen in time for the German federal election in February anyway. "Some platforms like X don't seem to be cooperating whatsoever with the EU rules, so it will be quite challenging to bring that platform in line with democratic values and EU rules," he said.

This could be even more difficult in future because Musk's role is growing in US policy-making, Kettemann said, after US Vice President-elect JD Vance suggested this week that the US would withdraw support for NATO if the EU tried to regulate X.

As more and more voters, especially young voters, are informing themselves about politics and world affairs on social media, Ketterman urged traditional parties to step up their activities on social media platforms because they should not leave the field to disinformation actors.

"We have to fight the fight," he said.

Edited by: Rina Goldenberg

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