Commentary - Populism, social media and the German elections O

It has now become the first far-right party to sit in the Bundestag since 1961.1 This victory follows in the wake of recent elections in the Netherlands and in France where populists also made a significant impact at the expense of traditional political parties. [...] Enter the AfD and its promise to protect the interests of the ‘man in the street’ by opposing Merkel’s migrant policy. [...] Little doubt exists that attempts were made to disseminate fake news in the German election, and the sharing of fake news spiked the weekend of the voting. [...] Populist politicians on social media The final lesson to be taken from the German elections is the importance of populism on social media. [...] The size of a page’s following does not necessarily indicate support for the party’s ideas, but the AfD also performs relatively better than mainstream German political parties in ‘Key Performance Indicators’ such as likes, comments, and shares of posts.8 These indicators are used to evaluate a page’s popularity on social media and to estimate the size of the audience the page’s postings reach.