Germany goes to the polls
On February 23, Germany will hold snap elections, called after the “traffic-light” coalition consisting of Social Democrats, the Green Party, and Free Democrats broke down in November 2024, following budgetary disputes. The Christian-Democratic Party, headed by its chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz, is leading in the polls, followed by the far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany) (Wahlrecht, 2025). So far, the election campaign has mainly been dominated by personality-related questions, and topics such as Germany’s economic situation or immigration. In the past weeks, Germany’s election campaign has been overshadowed by the erosion of the “firewall”, Germany’s version of a cordon sanitaire (Abou-Chadi, 2025) – a post-war consensus of mainstream parties to not cooperate legislatively or politically with far-right parties. To pass an anti-migration and asylum motion for a resolution, opposition leader Merz and the Free Democrats deliberately drew on votes of the far-right AfD. Despite this support, the motion narrowly failed to pass at second reading (Fitzpatrick, 2025). Since this breach of political norms, hundreds of thousands have headed to the streets to protest this move, and even the Christian-Democratic former chancellor Angela Merkel has criticised Merz’s attempt (Reuters, 2025).
This final article of the OII Elections series asks: What is the role of digital factors in Germany’s election?
While concerns about electoral dynamics and the digital sphere mainly focused on the purported effects of online content such as disinformation or viral campaigns, the power dynamics behind these platforms and the party-political scene in which they operate really do matter. This article situates the German elections against a complex background of the normalisation of far-right parties, the political influence of extreme digital platform owners, and explores the possible impacts on the regulation of the digital sphere.
Moving beyond a content-centred perspective
The discussions of elections and digital aspects often focuses on social media content, yet the events around the German election campaign demonstrate that this relationship is more complicated. The abruptly started election campaign began in a relatively benign fashion on social media, with Social-Democratic chancellor Olaf Scholz answering questions that his audience asked in his TikTok comments or the Green chancellor candidate Robert Habeck filming his interactions with citizens at their kitchen tables. The strong presence of the AfD on TikTok motivated mainstream parties before the 2024 European elections to increase their presence on the short video platform under the hashtag #ReclaimTikTok (Spiegel, 2024). In the last stages of the election campaign, the Left party might have even attracted more views than the AfD (ZDF heute, 2025). The idea that the popularity of the AfD on TikTok is driving the far-right vote is quite popular in German media and political discourse. This idea should not be regarded as a sole factor and needs to be proven empirically. Preliminary research suggests that TikTok can cause support for AfD candidates but no shifts in ideology (Heyna, 2024).
TikTok or Instagram are much more regularly used (circa 30% each) by German citizens, whereas X (formerly), a platform that is often associated with the political sphere, only sees 7% of regularly active German users (ARD/ZDF, 2025). Despite the marginality of X in terms of usage in Germany, Elon Musk still played a role in the election campaign.
First, the leader of the Free Democrats and dismissed finance minister Christian Lindner claimed in December that Germany “needs to dare more Musk” (Handelsblatt, 2024). Then, Elon Musk endorsed the radical right AfD on X and further meddled with German politics by being broadcasted to its party convention in January (Fitzpatrick, 2025).
These developments might demonstrate that worrying dynamics in the online sphere, such as a lack of platform governance or algorithms pushing radical views, are not confined to online dynamics. Rather than bots or anonymous citizens making far-right claims on social media platforms, owners of these platforms use them to push their far-right views and endorse far-right politicians. These developments underline dynamics of power asymmetry in platform ownership and lack of democratic scrutiny over communication infrastructure.
Another aspect that is often associated with online dynamics is disinformation. Experts have pointed out how disinformation should not be understood as a purely online phenomenon, as it is also spread by some politicians or media outlets and thus represents a symptom of deeper political issues (Hofmann, Knüpfer & Keller, 2025). This phenomenon has also been described as disinformation from the top (Leake, 2024; Nielsen, 2024). The aftermath of the erosion of Germany’s cordon sanitaire is another example of this: To justify his restrictive stances on migration policy and his acceptance of far-right legislative support, the Christian-Democratic chancellor candidate Merz made a claim on sexual violence crimes and asylum seekers. This claim was immediately debunked by fact-checkers and media (Correctiv, 2025). This points to the importance of public scrutiny by civil society and media outlets (Hofmann, Knüpfer & Keller, 2025).
Could far-right dynamics impact digital policy?
The European Commission and Germany have tried to regulate harmful online dynamics through measures such as the European Digital Services Act or the German Network Enforcement Act. German parties are increasingly mentioning and developing positions on digital issues (see here for an overview of digital policy in party manifestos). Generally, established left-wing and centre left parties supported these initiatives while conservative and liberal parties showed support but also advocated for more innovation and less regulation in the digital realm (Güttel, 2024; 2025).
In contrast, the AfD rejects the European AI Act, the DSA, and the German Network Enforcement Act because they claim these regulations would restrict freedom of expression (AfD, 2024b, p. 20). Civil society initiatives against disinformation are also harshly criticised, as they argue that internet users should have the right to “be wrong” (AfD, 2024b, p. 20). Similarly, in their 2024 European manifesto, the AfD also spreads a populist narrative in which Brussels is portrayed as an antagonist that acts against the will of citizens and states, including in the realm of digitalisation (AfD, 2024a, p. 49-51). Furthermore, the AfD postulates that the EU’s digitalisation regulations aim to monitor and censor citizens and called for an abolition of the GDPR (AfD, 2024a, p. 42).
Before the 2024 European and 2025 Bundestag elections, the far-right party baselessly claimed that European countries want to establish social scoring techniques based on the Chinese model (AfD, 2024b, p. 18) – without any evidence for this claim. Digital policy is certainly not the most central issue in this election. However, against the background of platform ownership and the normalisation of far-right actors in politics, it is worth looking at whether questions relating to the regulation of the digital economy and governance will be further politicised.
The limits of digital explanations?
In the current media and political discourse, many worries around elections and social media focus on content-based phenomena such as disinformation or algorithmic curation. The complicated dynamics in Germany do not mean that these phenomena do not warrant attention, instead they call for the contextualisation into more longstanding party-political and institutional dynamics. While problematic content matters, so do the actors behind these platforms, their market power, and the political dynamics in which they operate. Related to the prevalence and normalisation of far-right dynamics online and offline, it has been underlined how Silicon Valley has advanced authoritarian ideas for a long time (Lewis, 2025). Many of the worrying dynamics online might thus actually predate social media.
It is well documented in political science research that the legitimisation of far-right parties by established parties contributes to far-right parties’ success (Jacobs & Pilet, 2024; Valentim et al., 2023) and that centre-parties cannot “re-gain” far-right voters by moving to the right (Krause et al., 2022). Recent research also points to how the normalisation of said actors in social norms plays a role in far-right support (Valentim, 2024). At the same time, the success of far-right parties and influence of far-right ideologists on social media platforms can also have an impact on the governance of the digital public sphere.
Faced with the fear of democratic backsliding in many countries, it might be easier to look at certain online dynamics, however this can obscure the broader systemic issues at play. The German election campaign illustrates that addressing these challenges requires situating digital phenomena within the context of historical institutions, party politics, and societal norms.
Author: OII doctoral researcher Licinia Güttel. Find out more about Licinia’s research interests.
Read more articles from the OII’s Election 2024 series.
