How did political parties apply Twitter during the 2017 German election campaign? Can we find similarities and differences in their communication tactics? These questions guide this study, which focuses on parties’ goals (vote seeking, office seeking, policy seeking) and campaign tactics (negative campaigning, acclaiming, mobilization) . While other studies focus on candidates’ Twitter accounts, here a closer look is taken at official party accounts in order to learn more about their official tactics . Therefore, the most frequently used hashtags were evaluated . All parties that won seats during the election used Twitter for their campaigns . The CDU and the SPD pushed their candidates on Twitter, while the FDP, the Left, and the Greens used the mobilizing hashtag #btw17 to refer to the election in general . The AfD mostly referred to themselves using the hashtag #afd . A closer look reveals strengths and weaknesses of parties campaigning on Twitter .
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