Political Content on Social Media

The Potsdam Social Media Monitor (PSMM) was founded in 2024 at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Potsdam. Our mission is to develop methods to measure the use, content and impact of social media and to create accountability tools for social media platforms. PSMM utilizes a variety of interdisciplinary approaches, including from sociology, political science and computer science.

We are currently working on understanding unequal exposure to far-right parties in the context of German elections. We are implementing two pilot studies:

1. State elections 2024

As part of the first pilot project for the German state elections in Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony in 2024, we succeeded in measuring the distribution of political content on TikTok. The results show that AFD content was more successful in reaching new users. The results received a high level of public attention (e.i. Spiegel, DW, FAZ, Tagesschau, RBB, FAZ, among others).

Initial results and a methodology report have been published [here]https://osf.io/preprints/osf/qwrjh_v1. The scientific paper is currently under review.

2. Bundestag election 2025

The second project is a large-scale, cross-platform audit study on political content on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, X in the context of the 2025 federal election. Initial results and press releases are expected in spring 2025.

Team:

• Prof. Dr. Roland Verwiebe (Co-PI)
• Prof. Dr. Jasper Tjaden (Co-Pi)
• Prof. Dr. Ulrich Kohler (Co-PI)
• Johannes Wolfgram (Data Mining)
• Aaron Philip (Data Analyst)
• Sarah Weissman (Researcher)
• Licia Bobzien (PostDoc)