Hendrik Meyer

International Communication Association

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Activists Preserving the (Multi-Platform) Environment: Advocacy Coalitions of #Lützerath Climate Protests Digital platforms intertwine the offline and online spheres of climate activism, as seen in the anti-coal demonstration in the German village of Lützerath. Through automated network/content analyse...

🔗 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

🛜 Bottom line: Single-platform studies risk drawing normatively loaded conclusions from a structurally partial picture. If we want to understand polarization, counterpublic- & coalition-building in fragmented media environments, multi-platform designs, despite challenges & shortcomings, are needed.

• Results complicate the “closed-off communities = always bad” storyline.
• Some (semi-)closed spaces can be functional & protective for organizing & coordinating protest, while similar “counterpublic” dynamics can also describe reactionary, defensive coalitions that mobilize against activists.

3️⃣➡️ This has normative implications for conceptualizations of #polarization, #counterpublics, and so-called “echo chambers” surrounding #climatechange and #activism debates—and shows why multi-platform research is overdue:

• Twitter/X and Mastodon are more about public evaluation, visibility, and contested interpretations of events:
- police actions versus police violence;
- climate policy demands versus denial/delay of the need for climate action;
- legitimacy versus supposed radicalism of protest tactics;
- ...

2️⃣👁️‍🗨️ Each platform plays a distinct role for protesters:

• Telegram matters even when the advocacy coalition is comparatively small: The platform functions as an essential semi-public infrastructure for intra-group support, organizing, and logistics.

• Twitter/X: two large polarized coalitions competing in public arena.
• Telegram: dominant “antagonist mainstream” alongside a smaller, isolated advocacy subnetwork; nevertheless central for protesters (see below)
• Mastodon: pro-activist environment; antagonists remain scattered & don't cluster

We show that “the protest debate” looks fundamentally different depending on where you look.

❗ Core insights:

1️⃣💥 Coalition structures differ sharply by platform (advocates vs. antagonists):

❓ How do different social media platforms shape the formation of advocate/antagonist coalitions within #climateprotest debates?

⏩ multi-platform network & content analysis (+ qual. validation) of 259,334 posts surrounding Lützerath protests, comparing #Twitter/ #X, #Telegram, and #Mastodon

New #OpenAccess paper in #EnvironmentalCommunication 🎉:
“Activists Preserving the (Multi-Platform) Environment: Advocacy Coalitions of #Lützerath Climate Protests”
(w/ @pzerrer.bsky.social, Hannah-Marie Büttner & @kudusch.de)

🔗 Link: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

🧵⬇️ Summary Thread:

When debates break apart: discursive polarization as a multi-dimensional divergence emerging in and through communication Abstract. “Polarization” is a common diagnosis of the state of contemporary societies. Yet, few studies theorize or systematically analyze how polarization

🔎 Our #OpenAccess Communication Theory article, which adds further perspectives and develops a more thorough framework for measuring #Polarization in media content:
doi.org/10.1093/ct/q...

The Elgar Encyclopedia of Political Communication is out & we (w/ Michael Brüggemann) contributed an entry on
💥 "Discursive #Polarization" 🗯️

Many thanks to the editors @alessandronai.bsky.social, Max Grömping & @dominiquewirz.bsky.social!

🛜 #OpenAccess accepted preprint:
osf.io/preprints/os...

Proposed methods teaching material regarding network analysis: could there be a nicer way of teaching students what nodes and edges in a network are?

Polarised media framing of climate movements: A comparative mixed-methods analysis of Australia and Germany - Katharina Esau, Hendrik Meyer, Mike Farjam, Axel Bruns, Helena Rauxloh, Michael Brüggemann... This study investigates the media framing of climate movements in Australia and Germany. Media frames are powerful tools for shaping public perceptions of socia...

New mixed-methods study out in Media International Australia! We compare 🇦🇺 & 🇩🇪 news framing of climate movements — revealing media polarisation: right-leaning outlets often frame activists as threats, while centre/left ones portray them less negatively. 👉 doi.org/10.1177/1329...

Beyond anti-elitism and out-group attacks: how concerns shape the AfD’s populist representation on German TikTok during the 2024 European elections TikTok is a pivotal platform for political communication, especially among younger users. This study examines how the German rightwing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) used TikTok to di...

🔗 Full #OpenAccess Article:
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

🌄 Limitations & Outlook (follow-up studies are in the making)

– Analysis focused on elites; the fringes of far-right TikTok may look quite different.
– Since EU elections, platform dynamics may have shifted, with other parties (e.g., Die Linke) catching up ahead of the 2025 federal election.

⏩ Overall, the AfD generates engagement through divisive frames yet sustains attention — while veiling its radical and extremist positions — by blending established far-right narratives with everyday concerns.

– Out-group and migration-related themes appeared less often but still generated strong engagement.

This may reflect ...
(a) a strategic shift toward themes that resonate with citizens, and/or
(b) entrenched exclusionary tropes of 'thick populism' that remain implicit in much of the discourse.

❗/💡 Discussion / Interpretation
– Beyond identity-based attacks, the AfD strategically foregrounded real-world concerns that resonate with potential voters ... while still intertwining them with anti-elite cues.

– Horizontal protectionism (e.g., migration critique, gender/wokeness) was least frequent (~30%).
– AfD dominance: higher overall engagement rate and far greater output (from accounts with ≥100k lifetime likes) than all other German parties combined.

📈 Results: What Was Posted & What Drives Engagement?
– Anti-elitism and out-group attacks generated higher per-video engagement.
– Yet most content leaned toward anti-elite messages or concern-focused themes (economy/inflation, security, rights/freedoms).

🧩 Populist Themes & Types (theory-grounded)
We identified 12 themes organized into 3 populist types:

1. Horizontal protectionism (identity/out-group: migrants, “wokeism”)
2. Vertical protectionism (anti-elitism/anti-institutionalism)
3. Concerns of the people (economy/inflation, security, freedoms)

🔍 Data & Methods
Timeframe: Mar–Jun 2024
– Content analysis: LLM-enhanced topic modeling (based on 'Concept Induction' by Lam et al., 2024) on 1,271 AfD video transcripts from 54 AfD accounts.
– Engagement comparison: Platform metrics from 109 politicians (5,590 videos in total)

❓ Research Interests
– How did AfD politicians use TikTok to communicate populist content during the run-up to the EU elections?
– How did these communication strategies relate to user engagement?

Excited to share our new #OpenAccess article in Information, Communication & Society:
“Beyond anti-elitism and out-group attacks: How concerns shape the AfD’s #populist representation on German #TikTok during the 2024 #EU #elections”
/w @julialenz.bsky.social, L. Rodeck & @drfell.bsky.social
(⬇️ 🧵)

From disruptive protests to disrupted news frames: Comparing German news on climate protests - Hendrik Meyer, Mike Farjam, Helena Rauxloh, Michael Brüggemann, 2025 This paper examines how news frames on disruptive climate protests differ from coverage of conventional protests in news outlets with different political leanin...

🛜 Link to full article (Open Access):
doi.org/10.1177/1464...

3️⃣ This also calls for journalistic self-reflection: Is the broader media sphere amplifying narratives set by right-wing populist actors—even when attempting to deconstruct them?

2️⃣ Crucially, when covering LG, the media sphere converges on narratives used mainly by right-wing populist outlets for FFF, even when some outlets aim to critique/deconstruct those narratives.

❗ Main takeaways
1️⃣ The protest paradigm intensifies with disruptiveness: event-, criminality-, and extremism-focused coverage crowds out substantive questions of climate justice.