Young voters: “Elections are not won by TikTok videos”

Social media is important for informing young people, but not decisive in voting, says teacher and TikToker Niko Kappe. AfD and Volt have similarities because they both make offers to young people.

tagesschau.de: How do young people vote? Do they look for facts and information or are their decisions more emotional?

Niko Cap: 27 percent vote for small parties. These are parties that have done little advertising. That means they actively searched for them, actively engaged with the content and then decided: I’ll vote for them.

It should be similar with the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance, because it is very new. If you are not interested in politics, you may not have heard much about it. So I do think that very, very many young people have calculated who they are going to vote for.

tagesschau.de: Nevertheless, there is a lot of advertising, especially on social media. What role does social media play in decision-making?

Cap: Basically, I have to say: elections are not won by TikTok videos. I think that needs to be made very clear again. That would be far too easy.

Social media obviously plays a big role. When I was young, when you were young, extreme positions were not directly accessible to us. Today, parties like the AfD, but also all the others, can broadcast directly to children’s rooms. And that is of course a big difference. It is received there unfiltered.

Especially the structure of social media platforms like TikTok or Instagram – once you’ve seen the “wrong” video or a certain thematic video, you’re quickly in a so-called rabbit hole. That means you only see videos on that topic.

That is worrying because there is a lot of information thrown at young people. Maybe even things that cannot be verified. You don’t know if it is true? Maybe at some point you no longer ask yourself: is it true? Instead you take it for granted. Reality is sometimes distorted.

tagesschau.de: But you can only get into a so-called rabbit hole if the channel has appealing advertising. What makes the channels of the AfD and the much smaller Volt party special? What do they focus on?

Cap: As I said, TikTok does not decide the election. It is also not the case, for example, that the AfD is the most successful party on TikTok. There was a recent study by the German Institute for Economics. It found that the FDP probably made the most popular or strongest videos on TikTok. And it must also be said: The SPD made by far the most videos on the European elections – but that did not help them.

That means that other parties are doing something right in that sense, because they reach more people. I think that there are basically two things. On the one hand, what has always worked in the populist field, namely offering simple answers to complex problems. If you post that on social media, then the opposition is also less. If a lot of people shout “Hurrah” in the comments, you might start to think that this could actually be a solution.

And then, for example, the AfD and Volt actually have something in common. They both make an offer to young people, which means they say: We know what your problems are and we have a solution for them. Both have a vision for the future. This vision is of course completely different in terms of content, but both have something to offer young people.

What is also clear on social media, especially with the AfD, is that you can feel like you are part of a movement when you get caught up in this whirlpool. And then you see that everyone is posting blue hearts and everyone is shouting: “Be smart, vote blue”. Then you can quickly feel like you are part of a community.

Volt has done it in the other direction, especially with regard to Europe. They have a vision for the future, namely that there should be a European federal state, for example. Volt calls itself a pan-European movement. So there are several points that appeal to young people, which would of course work without social media, but are significantly reinforced here.

tagesschau.de: Let’s look at the Greens. They have had to cope with the biggest drop in support among young people. How do you explain that?

Cap: The FDP also lost a lot of support among young voters. The party mentioned many options for the future, made many offers and promises that, in the eyes of young voters, could not be kept. For this, the party was punished.

With the Greens, it seems that one of the main issues in the election was migration. That is why the party was unable to get its issues across. Then there is the dispute within the traffic light coalition.

But what I also notice when talking to people is that prejudices are being conveyed via social media. They then simply say: The Greens want to ban us from driving cars – and of course I’m not going along with that. But that’s not the case.

The interview was conducted by Bibiana Barth. It was shortened and edited for the written version.