The youth vote for Germany's far-right party, the AfD is growing ahead of key elections, and social media may be playing a significant role in this development.
Social media could play a role in this development, with far-right politicians finding success on platforms including TikTok.
In Bavaria's mock state election for under-18s in September, the AfD added over 6 percentage points to become the second biggest party with 14.9% of the vote, according tojumped by 8 percentage points to receive 18% of votes from 18-24-year-olds in the 2023 Hesse state election, Infratest Dimap data "The 'rabbit-hole-' or tunnel-effect quickly becomes problematic when it comes to political topics," Eva Berendsen, head of communication and political education at the Anne Frank educational institute, told CNBC in translated comments.
At time of writing, the AfD's parliamentary faction had 414,000 followers on TikTok, far more than on other social media platforms such as Instagram for example, where it has amassed 108,000.Various AfD politicians, such as European Parliament member Maximilian Krah, are also successful on an individual basis. Videos posted on Krah's account frequently reach hundreds of thousands on TikTok, as he talks about how "real men" vote for the right and counters left-wing figureheads.
These messages often reach a young audience with little background knowledge through TikTok, she added.and is crucial for user engagement. It adapts quickly, showing users similar content to what they have previously interacted with, or watched for more than a few seconds.
"Extremist content is in many cases youth-oriented and professional. The messages are conveyed in line with youth-culture, for example through the use of music, games, current topics or the people that post them," a spokesperson said in translated comments.Emotionally loaded keywords and topics such as family, equality and identity are also often used, Berendsen added.
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