Immigration, Social Media, and the Far-Right: A Twitter Study of the Political Communication of Alternative für Deutschland Following Terrorist Events

With the global events of technological advancement and mass migration, the prominence of terrorist incidents and subsequent media coverage is garnering more and more attention. The existing literature on populist communication and population responses to terrorist events indicate a potential correlation between characteristic changes in online political communication by right-wing parties and the occurrence of terrorist events. Terror Management Theory (TMT) and sense-making suggest that a population would be more susceptible to political messaging and anti-immigration agenda setting following a terrorist attacks. I use a big-data study of Tweets in Germany from the years 2013-2019 in order to test whether or not this correlation exists. I conclude that there is no statistically significant evidence that shows that terrorist events affect either the frequency of immigration-related Tweets or the sentiment (positivity or negativity and emotionally charged content) contained within.Master of Art