Neue Wahrheiten von rechts außen?<b>Alternative Nachrichten und der „Rechtspopulismus“ in Deutschland</b>

Weisskircher, Manès

doi:10.1515/fjsb-2020-0040

Cited by 20 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Moreover, also the well-known far-right alternative news website Politically Incorrect News is most popular in the east. 10 Still, it is the electoral appeal of AfD that most clearly sets the east apart. Table 2 shows how AfD has performed in nationwide elections since its foundation, underlining that the differences in electoral support between east and west actually grew over time.…”

Section: The Strength Of the Far Right In Eastern Germanymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Strength of Far‐Right AfD in Eastern Germany: The East‐West Divide and the Multiple Causes behind ‘Populism’

Weisskircher

2020

Political Quarterly

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100

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This article sheds light on one of the key developments in recent German politics and relates it to the broader debate on the electoral success of the far right. The rise of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD, Alternative for Germany) is also a story about Germany’s internal political divide three decades after reunification, as the party has roughly twice as much support in the east than in the west. The article analyses the country’s east‐west divide, strongly visible in widespread sentiments of societal marginalisation among eastern Germans. The key socio‐structural differences between the east and the west relate to matters of economics, migration, and representation—and provide a setting suitable to AfD strength in the east. In explaining the party’s electoral success in eastern Germany, the article echoes recent scholarship which rejects narrow explanations for the strength of ‘populism’, and instead highlights its multiple causes.

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Section: The Strength Of the Far Right In Eastern Germanymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Strength of Far‐Right AfD in Eastern Germany: The East‐West Divide and the Multiple Causes behind ‘Populism’

Weisskircher

2020

Political Quarterly

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100

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“…With the rise of the German right-wing populist AfD, recent analyses have focused on explaining the determinants of the long-failed success of a right-wing populist party in Germany (Arzheimer, 2015;Berbuir, Lewandowsky, and Siri, 2015). Despite focusing on nativism and hostility towards migration as specific policy issues (Arzheimer and Berning, 2019;Bieber, Roßteutscher, and Scherer, 2018;Hambauer and Mays, 2018;Pesthy, Mader, and Schoen, 2021), other contributions have analyzed the role of narratives and misinformation, especially on social media in light of the previously cited contributions concerned with populism and social media (Sängerlaub, M. Meier, and Rühl, 2020;Serrano et al, 2019;Weisskircher, 2020). Consequently, research on social media and AfD support draws a similar conclusion as previous research by finding the most homogeneous networks among AfD supporters (Gärtner and Wuttke, 2019) and an increased social media engagement by AfD supporters (Schumann et al, 2021).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narratives on migration and political polarization: How the emphasis in narratives can drive us apart

Levi¹,

Bayerlein²,

Grimalda³

et al. 2023

MUNI ECON WP

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Nowadays, immigration is a polarizing topic in politics. In this paper, we investigate how much this political polarization is driven by the depiction narratives made of immigrants vis-a-vis the natives. Furthermore, we look at whether polarization is rooted in private preferences over narratives or in how they are endorsed in public settings and social media. Our empirical strategy consists of a survey experiment in the 2021 German elections and a field experiment on Twitter in which we manipulate the “pinned tweets” of experimental users. To build our narratives, we manipulate either the policy position — hostile toward or accepting migration — or an emphasis on the out-group, on the in-group, or on economic reciprocity. We find that political polarization is driven both by the policy position and emphasis in narratives. On Twitter, the out-group emphasis drives supporters of different parties apart, and the corresponding hostile narrative becomes the only one going viral. In the survey, right-wing participants prefer the reciprocity emphasis more, but we still find evidence of more polarization when allowing the participants to go public.

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“…Importantly, the AfD also cooperates with "alternative media" platforms, which have become an increasingly relevant instrument of far-right mobilisation (Rone, 2021). Such platforms have flourished in the Germanspeaking online sphere, with Politically Incorrect News as the main example (Weisskircher, 2020a). Some AfD politicians contribute to this and other platforms as authors.…”

Section: The Role Of the Internet For Mobilisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

No Strong Leaders Needed? AfD Party Organisation Between Collective Leadership, Internal Democracy, and “Movement-Party” Strategy

Heinze

Weisskircher

2021

PaG

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This article analyses the formal and lived organisation of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD, Alternative for Germany). We show that the party is exceptional among what is usually understood as the populist radical right (PRR) party family, at least from an organisational perspective: The AfD sharply contradicts the “standard model” of PRR party organisation, which emphasises “charismatic” leadership and the centralisation of power as key features. Instead, studying the AfD’s efforts to adopt some elements of a mass-party organisation and its relatively decentralised decision-making underlines the importance of “movement-party” strategy, collective leadership, and internal democracy—concepts that are usually associated with Green and left-wing parties. Our analysis shows how the party’s organisation is essential for understanding its development more broadly as it reflects and reinforces sharp intra-party conflict. From this perspective, the case of the AfD sheds new light on the relationship between PRR party organisation and electoral success, indicating the importance of strong ties to parts of society over effective internal management as long as demand for anti-immigration parties is high. We conclude that even though AfD quickly built up a relatively inclusive organisational structure, the role of both its leadership and its rank-and-file is still a matter of controversy.

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Neue Wahrheiten von rechts außen?Alternative Nachrichten und der „Rechtspopulismus“ in Deutschland

Cited by 20 publications

References 27 publications

The Strength of Far‐Right AfD in Eastern Germany: The East‐West Divide and the Multiple Causes behind ‘Populism’

The Strength of Far‐Right AfD in Eastern Germany: The East‐West Divide and the Multiple Causes behind ‘Populism’

Narratives on migration and political polarization: How the emphasis in narratives can drive us apart

No Strong Leaders Needed? AfD Party Organisation Between Collective Leadership, Internal Democracy, and “Movement-Party” Strategy

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