Elections in 2021 vs. 2025.
The normalization of disinformation?

19.02.2025

In the next few days, Germans will choose their next government, which will have to navigate a complex polycrisis. While every election is important because it determines the path the country will follow for the next (hopefully) four years, the upcoming Bundestag election is particularly relevant due to the many challenges the new government will face. On the eve of the election, just as we do on New Year's Eve, it is a good time to reflect on where we were the last time Germany chose its chancellor.

In 2021, Germans were called to elect a new chancellor after Angela Merkel’s era, and the most pressing challenge was overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic while promoting a new economic model that balanced growth and climate protection. While we have abandoned masks and returned to normal—almost forgetting the pandemic era and even the toilet paper shortages in supermarkets—climate change remains as much of a threat as it was in 2021. Meanwhile, new urgent matters have arisen, such as geopolitical tensions and threats to European security following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the escalation of conflict in the Middle East.

A persistent context of economic instability and rising political polarization in Europe reached a new level when Donald Trump was re-elected as President of the United States. While 2021 was marked by the assault on the U.S. Capitol, 2025 appears to be the year in which Trump became a direct risk to Europe. If in 2021, Trump was banned from Twitter (now X) due to his comments inciting rioters, in 2025, the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk, speaks to the press from the Oval Office while ‘Donald Trump 2.0’ sits at his presidential desk.

While these different circumstances could be considered anecdotal, the growing influence of Musk in U.S. politics is feared to also affect European politics, with the German elections being one of the first tests of how resilient democracy is to disinformation. In this respect, previous research using 2021 data showed that Germans’ attitudes toward democracy were not significantly affected by social media (see Navarrete and Eder 2024). 

In our research using data collected by the digilog@bw project a few months before the 2021 Bundestag elections, Christina Eder and I analyzed the extent to which using social media as the main source of political information impacts satisfaction with democracy, preferences for democracy as the best system, and an index of liberal democratic principles. Based on our findings, whether someone consumed political information primarily via social media did not significantly affect their belief that democracy is the best political regime or their support for democratic principles. However, individuals’ satisfaction with the way democracy works was slightly lower when their news diet included social media as one of their main sources of political information. While these results invite cautious optimism regarding the limited magnitude of the threat posed by misinformation on social media platforms, we found that those citizens most likely to believe mis/disinformation were also consistently the least willing to support democracy 

Source: Navarrete and Eder, 2024.

In the current context, with social media platforms such as those from the META group announcing that they will no longer fact-check content posted by their users, concerns about misinformation and online bullying potentially reaching unprecedented levels are growing. This is a concern shared by most citizens. While in 2021, 58% of German citizens believed that misinformation spread on social media posed a threat to democracy and 48% thought false information disseminated online had been used to influence electoral outcomes (see Navarrete and Eder 2024), by 2024, more than 84% of respondents in a study conducted in Germany by the Bertelsmann Stiftung viewed online disinformation as a threat to democracy and a factor dividing society.

The current electoral campaign appears to be flooded with disinformation, and this has taken on a global scale, especially after Musk openly expressed his support for Alternative für Deutschland and gave its leader, Alice Weidel, global exposure. In a conversation between Musk and Weidel, disinformation was actively spread—one of the most notable examples being Weidel’s false claim that Hitler was a communist. Following this statement, there was a significant increase in searches for the term “Hitler” in Germany, nearly matching the spike seen on January 21st, after Musk made a Nazi salute.

Source: Google Trends

We cannot determine whether those who searched for this term on Google did so because they were interested in fact-checking information. However, this is a clear example of how events on X—especially now, with its owner increasingly involved in politics—resonate beyond the platform. In this respect, the threat may be more subtle. The generalization of such claims, the normalization of online harassment, and the mainstreaming of radical right-wing ideas could contribute to breaking long-established social consensus.

If the person who whispers into the ear of the President of the United States contributes to the spread of disinformation, some people may choose to fact-check the information before believing it. However, if the communication style resembles that of a bully—who jokes about immigrants being handcuffed and promotes dehumanizing narratives, such as the claim that migrants are eating the pets of American citizens—the long-term effect will be a growing tolerance for extreme rhetoric. This, in turn, will embolden those with the most repugnant views to express them openly, even when they contradict the fundamental principles of our democracies. Just as the brain, when habituated, requires stronger stimuli to elicit the same reaction, the more people are exposed to disinformation and dehumanizing content, the easier it becomes to tolerate what was once considered completely unacceptable. Thus, the long-term effects of disinformation may not necessarily be tied to whether people believe specific falsehoods, but rather to the extent to which social consensus and affective polarization are pushed to the limits. At our observatory, we are planning to monitor these developments closely.

References

Navarrete, R. M., & Eder, C. (2024). Social Media, Misinformation, and Attitudes Towards Democracy in Germany During the Covid-19 Pandemic. German Politics, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644008.2024.2436852