Tag: facebook

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

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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.

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The AfD’s Facebook strategy (Bloomberg)

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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…