Update: How the AfD ditched Euroscepticism and embraced immigration, in one picture

Update February 5, 2018

In March 2017, I posted a graph which shows how the AfD’s Facebook posts moved away from euroscepticism and Greece-bashing towards immigration and Islamophobia.


This research on the AfD has now been published as part of a larger project.


But trends can change, and local regression smoothers have a habit of behaving strangely at the borders. So I downloaded another year’s worth of Facebook posts and reran the scripts:

Update: How the AfD ditched Euroscepticism and embraced immigration, in one picture 1

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the new graph confirms for 2017 what we have seen for 2016: Muslims and immigrants are all the rage, whereas the Euro crisis is so 2014. I leave the old graph/post below as is for comparison.

Read more

The AfD’s Facebook strategy (Bloomberg)

I had a lengthy chat with someone from Bloomberg on the AfD and their use of Social Media. The result is a short piece with some soundbites by me. If you want to know a little more about the AfD’s role in the darker corners of the German Interwebs, have a look at my APSA…

The Alternative für Deutschland’s Facebook Fanpage is a Prime Location for Rightist Online Discourses in Germany

I’m currently updating my previous analysis of the Alternative für Deutschland’s (AfD) activities on Facebook, with a view of this eventually morphing into a paper for APSA 2015. Preliminary analyses show that their fanpage remains a hotspot for rightwingers, with high levels of activity through 2013 and 2014. For 2015, the trajectory slopes slightly downward.

Analysing Facebook with R

I’ve recently discovered Rfacebook, which lets you access public information on Facebook from R. In terms of convenience, no package for R or Python that I have seen so far comes near. Get yourself a long-lived token, store it as a variable, and put all posts on a fanpage you are interested in into one…

ECPR Joint Sessions Social Programme Taking Shape

With just two months to go until the 41st Joint Sessions of Workshops at Mainz, the local team is getting super-excited, if not slightly panicky. We have finally found funding for two drinks/finger-food receptions: a welcome bash at the university on Monday evening (5-7), and another reception on Wednesday night at Mainz City Hall following…

Guttenberg-Gate: When Politics and Science Collide

The story has now been picked up by just about every news outlet on the planet: A German law professor was supposed to review a monograph on European constitutional law for a learned journal. He soon discovered that various pages were not properly referenced, to says the least. The twist: This monograph is based on…