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Far right makes most noise on Twitter in German election

Published on
22 Sep 2017
Written by
Robert Gorwa

The project’s latest memo on the German federal election was featured in Reuters.

The far right is making the most noise on Twitter during Germany’s election campaign, but far less fake news is being spread in Germany than the United States saw before the election that put Donald Trump in power, an Oxford University study has found.

Of the million tweets tracked in the study, 30 percent were tied to the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD). The party is polling around 10 percent, putting it on track to enter parliament for the first time after the Sept. 24 election.

But more broadly, German users of Twitter showed a greater aversion to “junk” news than their counterparts in the United States before the November presidential election or in Britain before its general election in June. And Twitter itself is used far less by Germans than by Americans and Britons.

Read the full article here.

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