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Hendrik Meyer

@hendrikmeyer.bsky.social

680 followers 460 following 67 posts

Research Associate | PhD Candidate | Hamburg University Political & Climate (Protest) Communication Website: https://www.hendrik-meyer.com Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=j3fDB9oAAAAJ&hl=en

www.hendrik-meyer.com

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Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · May 20

New in Social Media + Society:
How do (non-)disruptive #climate #protests shape social media debates?
We analyzed ~5M Twitter/X posts on #FFF & #LetzteGeneration: Disruptive protests generate more engagement—but also more polarization, driven by right-wing/conservative users: doi.org/10.1177/2056...

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Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 1d

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

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...

www.tandfonline.com

Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 1d

🌄 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.

Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 1d

⏩ 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.

Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 1d

– 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.

Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 1d

❗/💡 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.

Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 1d

– 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.

Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 1d

📈 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).

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Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 1d

🧩 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)

Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 1d

🔍 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)

Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 1d

❓ 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?

Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 1d

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
(⬇️ 🧵)

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Reposted by Hendrik Meyer

Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · Jan 6

I compared 22 identical climate-related posts on Threads vs Bluesky over the last 3 months, and the difference is shocking.

Normalized engagement on Threads dropped nearly 2/3 + my following dropped, while Bluesky engagement held steady + following quadrupled.

What’s driving this?

Read on! 🧵

a monkey holding a smiley face a butterfly and an @ symbol

Alt: a monkey holding a smiley face a butterfly and an @ symbol

media.tenor.com

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Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 29d

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

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...

doi.org

Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 29d

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?

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Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 29d

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.

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Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 29d

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

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Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 29d

- The debate about protest demands recedes when protests are disruptive; extremism/criminality take center stage.
- Qualitative evidence shows that, based on newsroom ideologies, outlets still differ in evaluation and in who the emotional language targets—but the topical focus nonetheless converges.

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Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 29d

🔎 What we find
- For FFF, frame use and anger align with newsroom ideology: right-leaning outlets stress criminality/extremism; other outlets reference climate justice more often.
- For LG, coverage is more emotionally charged and dominated by criminality/extremism frames across newsroom ideologies.

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Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 29d

🧪 What we did
- Combined Word2Vec semantic mapping, an anger classifier, and qualitative close reading.
- Identified three salient frames: Global Climate Justice, Criminality, Extremism.
- Modeled outlet differences across the ideological spectrum.

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Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 29d

➡️ We analyzed 6,632 news articles from 21 German outlets (Jan 2022–May 2023) to compare coverage of Fridays for Future (FFF) and the more disruptive Letzte Generation (LG).

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Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · 29d

📢 Happy to see this #OpenAccess paper out in #Journalism!
"From disruptive protests to disrupted news frames: Comparing German news on climate protests"
with @mikefarjam.bsky.social, Helena Rauxloh & Michael Brüggemann

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Reposted by Hendrik Meyer

Bob E Hayes @bobehayes.bsky.social · Jun 26

A Practical Guide and Case Study on How to Instruct #LLMs for Automated Coding During #ContentAnalysis |@mikefarjam.bsky.social, ‪@hendrikmeyer.bsky.social‬, Meike Lohkamp

journals.sagepub.com...

#GenerativeAI

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Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · Jun 23

Okay, puh --- also kein falscher Link von mir :D

Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · Jun 23

Super, dann sind die technical issues auf der Seite wohl gelöst & danke! :)

Hendrik Meyer @hendrikmeyer.bsky.social · Jun 23

If you’re working with LLMs for text analysis, this framework might serve as a foundation for building your own coding pipeline around LLM-based classification (?) :)