This reflects unmodelled structural differences, such as regional political cultures & identities, but also organisational strength and social embeddedness of parties. If you are interested in German Politics and/or political behaviour & regionalisation, find the full pre-print here 👇

+++ Submissions to our conference are still open +++

CfA is now open—join in and register for our @protestinstitut.bsky.social Annual Conference 2026

Ich begleite gerade das forschungsjournal.de bei einem Generationswechsel in der Redaktion. Das Journal wird seit 1988 von einem ehrenamtlichen Team produziert. Zum Teil sind es noch dieselben Menschen. Jetzt sucht die Redaktion Leute, die Lust haben, das Forschungsjournal neu zu denken.

Jetzt auch in der ZDF-Mediathek: www.zdf.de/video/talk/s...

Against scientific evidence and just an act of pure cruelty. The Labour government's school guidance is an attack on basic freedoms and rights of LGBTQ+ people. It's ridiculous to think that these cowards and opportunists are the right people to defend this country's democracy against the far right.

Trust in leadership is essential to success A new study found that PhD students who had greater trust in their graduate advisor finished their first year more motivated, higher in well-being, and more academically successful than those with lower advisor trust. academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Das WZB-Projekt „Wirksam gegen Rechtsaußen" hat Strategien von zivilgesellschaftlichen Institutionen in der Auseinandersetzung mit #Rechtsextremismus untersucht und systematisiert. Den neuen Policy Brief dazu gibt es hier: www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10... @chjncke.bsky.social @tevoelker.bsky.social

Für Medienschaffende ist der Umgang mit der extremen Rechten zugegebenermaßen nicht immer einfach. Aber ein Lifestyle-Interview mit Chrupalla sprengt jeden journalistischen Rahmen. Hier wird nicht nur eine Plattform geboten, sondern extrem rechte Politik aktiv normalisiert. 🤯

Heute in den USA (links). Vor 100 Jahren in Deutschland (rechts).

Why did antisemitism rise in Germany during the Covid pandemic? And why was this increase concentrated among political centrists, rather than on the fringes? doi.org/10.1017/S153... @kanol.bsky.social @wzb.bsky.social @uni-hamburg.de @politikuhh.bsky.social @socfub.bsky.social

📣 Ich freue mich sehr, morgen im Rahmen der IRex-Studium-Generale-Ringvorlesung an der @unituebingen.bsky.social zum Thema Umgang mit der extremen Rechten sprechen zu dürfen. 📹 Die bisherigen Vorträge der Ringvorlesung sind bereits online in der Mediathek verfügbar: 👉 tinyurl.com/5fnh2ce4

This is a fantastic dataset for studying the evolution of political attitudes and party preferences in Germany. Here's a mosaic plot of vote choices in 2025 by vote choices in 2021 (as reported back then). One striking observation is the high volatility behind the overall gains of the Left Party.

The datasets from our @protestinstitut.bsky.social project ‘20 years of protest survey data’ are finally online for scientific re-use. We processed 30+ datasets, covering protests on peace, climate, trade, migration, equality & more. Now available @gesis.org 👇 search.gesis.org?source=%7B%2...

Far-right voters are marked by persistent self-victimisation narratives.

What better New Year’s resolution than becoming an ipb #member in 2026 ✨ 👉 By joining ipb, you can support our work as an #independent, extra-university research institute! Check out our website for more details: buff.ly/c5r2hxv

Amazing read! The finding that 'small minority of users accounts for the vast majority of hate speech' fits neatly with what I have been finding so far regarding far-right activists online and the diffusion of conspiracy theories.

The year is coming to an end. Time to look back at what happened at ipb this year: 1/6 ipb Working Papers 📄 Our Working Papers make early-stage research on social movements visible, from the Palestinian solidarity movement to Christopher Street Day demonstrations More in the comments 👇

🎉 The GLES panel data releases for the 2025 German federal election are now complete—an amazing data treasure for analyzing political attitude shifts and decision‑making during the campaign and beyond. #GLES2025 #BTW2025 #ElectionResearch

New Paper in @computationalcommunication.org The Telegram COVID-19 Protest Dataset 2020-2022 with the most wonderful co-autohors @buehling.bsky.social & @maxzehring.bsky.social >> 2020-2022 >> 715 channels & 229 public groups >> 5,641,026 messages >> Manually curated >> Open for researchers

This one is big. Great overview of the various currents within the populist family. Plus, it provides a rough template that one could use with regards to other ideological families. My immediate thought is that a taxonomy of the rapidly growing radical right would be especially compelling.

2 weitere Schlussfolgerungen der Studie: "An vielen Stellen zeigt sich deutlich, dass die AfD-Wählerschaft keine Protestwählerschaft (mehr) ist. Sie ist überzeugt von Themen, Lösungskompetenzen, Personal und die Wahlentscheidung fällt somit leicht." 89% von ihnen fiel die Wahlentscheidung leicht. 1

This hex-map breaks down the share of 15-24 year-olds in Germany and the regional contrast is hard to miss. Eastern Germany shows much lower shares except for larger cities, while many western and southern areas have noticeably more young people. #30DayMapChallenge Day 25: Hexagons #ggplot2

After a long time in development, {traktok} #rstats is now finally on CRAN! Whether you have access to the Research API or just want to scrape some pages, traktok has you covered jbgruber.github.io/traktok/

Vor 35 Jahren ermordete ein rassistischer Mob Amadeu Antonio. Wir erinnern an ihn & zeigen klar: Hass & Hetze, Rassismus & andere Formen von Menschenfeindlichkeit haben hier keinen Platz. Wir stehen für ein demokratisches Miteinander. Im Namen von Amadeu Antonio setzen wir uns tagtäglich dafür ein.

“Eine Untersuchung der politischen Wirklichkeit in 57 Ländern zeigt: Wenn die Rechte mitregiert, wird sie nicht geschwächt […] Im Gegenteil: Im Durchschnitt gewinnen rechtsradikale Parteien bis zur nächsten Wahl rund sechs Prozentpunkte hinzu.” www.sueddeutsche.de/meinung/demo...

Gastautor Professor Georg Voruba, österreichischer Soziologe und emeritierter Professor an der Universität Leipzig, schreibt im neuen EFBI-Policy Paper darüber, wie Verschwörungsweltbilder funktionieren und welcher Funktion Utopien in diesen Erzählungen dienen. efbi.de/details/efbi...

In der aktuellen Ausgabe der @apuz.bsky.social zum Thema "Reichsbürger" habe ich zum Zusammenhang mit dem Rechtsextremismus geschrieben. www.bpb.de/shop/zeitschriften/apuz/reichsbuerger-2025/572710/verschwoerungsideologischer-souveraenismus-und-rechtsextremismus/

Research based on a poll of 11,000 Reform UK supporters, the biggest survey of its kind, tells us more about who is intending to vote for the party than has been previously known.

My dataset covering #Querdenken has been awarded dataset of the month @gesis.org – which kind of feels like a bucket list moment I didn‘t even know was on the map 😇

Wir befragen wieder die größte Demo dieser Art. Danke an das gesamte Team!

Auffälligkeit in den Daten der neuen #Mitte-Studie: Unter den jungen Befragten sind Fremdenfeindlichkeit und ein rechtsextremes Weltbild deutlich stärker verbreitet als bei den älteren Menschen. (Komplette Studie der @fesonline.bsky.social: www.fes.de/index.php?eI...)

Im folgenden Thread einige Einblicke in meine Querdenken-Daten im Vergleich zur dt. Bevölkerung. Wenig überraschend hielt kaum jemand aus der Szene die Corona-Maßnahmen für „genau richtig“. Interessant: Innerhalb der Szene herrschte teils Uneinigkeit darüber, ob sie zu streng oder locker waren

My dataset covering the Querdenken movement is now available @dprex.bsky.social for scientific use, providing comprehensive insights into one of Germany‘s largest protest movements in recent years.

My dataset covering the Querdenken movement is now available @dprex.bsky.social for scientific use, providing comprehensive insights into one of Germany‘s largest protest movements in recent years.

Stoked to see a beloved side project finally come to completion. Today, I submitted my #Querdenken dataset (N= 4748). Available soon via @dprex.bsky.social for scientific reuse. Big thanks to @marlenehilgenstock.bsky.social for the great support. Looking foward seeing the findings it might generate.

New paper out with @dasalgon.bsky.social: “Far-Right Agenda Setting: How the Far Right influences the Political Mainstream” doi.org/10.1017/S1475676525100066 #openaccess in @ejprjournal.bsky.social🧵

Rejection is one of the toughest parts about academia and this post provides some great guidance on how to deal with it (that I will start trying to follow myself). Here's a couple of thoughts that the post triggered, if those happen to be of interest:

Mein Aufsatz "Verschwörungsnarrative im türkischen Nationalismus: Akteur:innen der türkisch-islamischen Ideologie in Deutschland und ihre Rolle für den antiarmenischen Rassismus und Antisemitismus" ist ab heute frei verfügbar - im Open Access-Sammelband "Projektiver Antizionismus":

Is it okay to engage with extremists? Join our webinar with @lizzypearson.bsky.social from Royal Holloway, University of London, on Oct. 16, 2025, from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM, online. Moderated, as always, by the one and only @audreygagnon.bsky.social! www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/englis...

Finally out: Revisiting the Exit from Nuclear Energy in Germany with NLP (DOI: 10.3262/ZFD2402218, www.researchgate.net/publication/...): How far can we replicate manual discourse annotation with NLP tools?

Happy to share first insights from our project ‘20 years of protest survey data’ at this year’s @protestinstitut.bsky.social conference in Bremen. We processed 30+ datasets with @gesis.org , covering protests on peace, climate, trade, migration, equality & more. Releasing soon via GESIS.

DP-REX | @dprex.bsky.social is now also on BlueSky! The data portal for data on right-wing #extremism, #racism, #antisemitism, and all forms of group-focused hostility and #radicalization. 🔗 datenportal-rechtsextremismus.de If you do research in these areas, it is worth checking out!

Most work out there argues that it doesn't pay off for center-right parties to move closer to the far-right. Using some of the best evidence yet, this paper shows that the same is true for center *left* parties. Crucial finding as these parties increasingly move in a nativist direction.

1/4. We're excited to announce the publication of: "How populist are ethnic minorities? Populist attitudes and voting for populist parties in the Netherlands", by Niels Spierings & Kristof Jacobs. @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social @sagepub.com

In many countries, mainstream politicians are adopting rhetoric and policies that typical of the far-right. Our new paper (w/ @dziblatt.bsky.social and E Dinas), out now in the @bjpols.bsky.social, finds that doing so erodes norms more than when far-right politicians make similar statements. 1/3

Do party alliances shift voter views? 🤝 A study in 🇩🇰🇩🇪🇬🇧 finds that when mainstream voters see their party cooperating with radical right parties, they’re more likely to adopt nativist views. Alliances may normalize exclusionary ideas. 🔗

I gave a lecture on “The Far Right in the Trump Era” at @renner-institut.at in Vienna this Summer. You can watch it here. 👇

Surveying emigrants worldwide–using Facebook and Instagram to recruit respondents in cross-national (e)migration research by Pötzschke & Weiß: doi.org/10.1186/s408... Social Networking Sites provide an opportunity for the recruitment of certain hard-to-reach populations in almost all countries.

Currently in FirstView: “Mapping (A)Ideology: A Taxonomy of European Parties Using Generative LLMs as Zero-Shot Learners.” Riccardo Di Leo, @zengchen.bsky.social, @eliasdinas.bsky.social‬, and @redatamtam.bsky.social see if ML can obtain measures of party ideology that match the validity of experts.