Twitter "Hashjacked": Online Polarisation Strategies of Germany's Political Far-Right

Philipp Darius and Fabian Stephany

No 6gbc9, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: With a network approach, we examine the case of the German far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and their potential use of a "hashjacking" strategy - the use of someone else’s hashtag in order to promote one's own social media agenda. Our findings suggest that right-wing politicians (and their supporters/retweeters) actively and effectively polarise the discourse not just by using their own party hashtags, but also by "hashjacking" the political party hashtags of other established parties. The results underline the necessity to understand the success of right-wing parties, online and in elections, not entirely as a result of external effects (e.g. migration), but as a direct consequence of their digital political communication strategy.

Date: 2019-10-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pay, nep-pol and nep-soc
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:6gbc9

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/6gbc9

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