NetzDG on Twitter: A Social Network Analysis of Stakeholders in Public Discourse About Platform Regulation in Germany

free speech; NetzDG; platform regulation; social network analysis; Twitter; Health (social science); Public Administration; Health Policy; Computer Science Applications

Abstract :

[en] This paper examines the Twitter debate about the German anti-hate-speech law, the Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz (NetzDG). Public discourse on this law has been contentious, with opponents cautioning against the risk of censorship and supporters emphasizing that NetzDG is necessary to protect democracy. Tweets provide valuable insights into the stakeholders, topics, and communicative practices that have shaped this discussion about platform regulation and free speech. Our research investigates the most retweeted accounts mentioning NetzDG and considers their influence on the discussion. It reveals the existence of two clusters with strong political identities: one connected to the right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland and one linked to the liberal Freie Demokratische Partei. A third cluster consists of media and technology stakeholders. Key takeaways are the significant role played by “alternative” right-wing media and specialized IT websites in some clusters and the central position of legal experts in all groups.

Disciplines :

Arts & humanities: Multidisciplinary, general & others

Author, co-author :

Pohlmann, Jens ; Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI), University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany ; Department of Science and Technology Studies at the University of California Davis, Davis, United States

Mello, Caio ; Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH), Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg

Henneberg, Karin León; Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI), University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

Zerrer, Patrick ; Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI), University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

DE CASTRO MELLO SANTOS, Caio ; University of Luxembourg > Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) > Digital History and Historiography

External co-authors :

yes

Language :

English

Title :

NetzDG on Twitter: A Social Network Analysis of Stakeholders in Public Discourse About Platform Regulation in Germany

Publication date :

December 2025

Journal title :

Policy and Internet

ISSN :

1944-2866

Publisher :

John Wiley and Sons Inc

Volume :

Issue :

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Additional URL :

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/poi3.70016

Funding text :

This research was made possible by a Seed Grant from the Data Science Center at the University of Bremen and research fellowships granted by the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum, Germany. The authors would like to thank Daniel Burckhardt and Hannah\u2010Marie B\u00FCttner for their thoughtful feedback, Gyde Hansen for her research assistance, and Lydia J. White for her thorough copyediting of the article. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

Available on ORBilu :

since 28 January 2026

Statistics

Number of views

3 (0 by Unilu)

Number of downloads

0 (0 by Unilu)

More statistics

Scopus citations^®

Scopus citations^®
without self-citations

OpenCitations

OpenAlex citations

WoS citations^™

Bibliography

Adewale Omipidan, I., M. Morenike Olanrewaju, J. Favour Wilson, et al. 2024. “The Role of Social Media in Shaping Public Discourse on Government Policies in Nigeria: A Discourse of the Nigerian X (Formerly Twitter) Space.” Journal of African Films and Diaspora Studies 7, no. 3: 65–85.
Alberici, A. I., and P. Milesi. 2013. “The Influence of the Internet on the Psychosocial Predictors of Collective Action.” Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 23, no. 5: 373–388.
Arun, C., A. Biswas, P. Sharma, et al. 2018. Hate Speech Laws in India. National Law University, Delhi. https://www.latestlaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/NLUD-Report-on-Hate-Speech-Laws-in-India.pdf.
Ausserhofer, J., and A. Maireder. 2013. “National Politics on Twitter: Structures and Topics of a Networked Public Sphere.” Information, Communication & Society 16, no. 3: 291–314.
Balkin, J. M. 2014. “Old-School/New-School Speech Regulation.” Harvard Law Review 127: 2296–2342.
Balkin, J. M. 2018. “Free Speech Is a Triangle.” Columbia Law Review 118, no. 7: 2011–2055.
Barrie, C., and J. Ho. 2021. “academictwitteR: An R Package to Access the Twitter Academic Research Product Track v2 API Endpoint.” Journal of Open Source Software 6, no. 62: 3272. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.03272.
Bastian, M., S. Heymann, and M. Jacomy. 2009. “Gephi: An Open Source Software for Exploring and Manipulating Networks.” Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 3, no. 1: 361–362. https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v3i1.13937.
Bax, D. 2018. Die Volksverführer: Warum Rechtspopulisten so erfolgreich sind. Frankfurt am Main Westend.
Bennett, W. L., and A. Segerberg. 2012. “The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics.” Information, Communication & Society 15, no. 5: 739–768.
Blondel, V. D., J. L. Guillaume, R. Lambiotte, and E. Lefebvre. 2008. “Fast Unfolding of Communities in Large Networks.” Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment 2008, no. 10: P10008.
Boccaletti, S., V. Latora, Y. Moreno, M. Chavez, and D. Hwang. 2006. “Complex Networks: Structure and Dynamics.” Physics Reports 424, no. 4–5: 175–308. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physrep.2005.10.009.
Bridge, G., S. W. Flint, and R. Tench. 2021. “A Mixed-method Analysis of the #SugarTax Debate on Twitter.” Public Health Nutrition 24, no. 11: 3537–3546.
Bruns, A. 2012. “How Long Is a Tweet? Mapping Dynamic Conversation Networks on Twitter Using Gawk and Gephi.” Information, Communication & Society 15, no. 9: 1323–1351. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2011.635214.
Bruns, A., and T. Highfield. 2015. “Is Habermas on Twitter? Social Media and the Public Sphere.” In The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics, edited by A. Bruns, G. Enli, E. Skogerbo, A. O. Larsson, and C. Christensen, 56–73. Routledge.
Calderón, C. A., G. de la Vega, and D. B. Herrero. 2020. “Topic Modeling and Characterization of Hate Speech Against Immigrants on Twitter Around the Emergence of a Far-Right Party in Spain.” Social Sciences 9, no. 11: 188.
Castells, M. 2015. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. John Wiley & Sons.
Ceron, A., and F. Negri. 2016. “The ‘Social Side’ of Public Policy: Monitoring Online Public Opinion and Its Mobilization During the Policy Cycle.” Policy & Internet 8, no. 2: 131–147.
Cha, M., H. Haddadi, F. Benevenuto, and K. Gummadi. 2010. “Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy.” Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 4, no. 1: 10–17. https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v4i1.14033.
Chakraborty, A., and N. Mukherjee. 2023. “Analysis and Mining of an Election-Based Network Using Large-Scale Twitter Data: A Retrospective Study.” Social Network Analysis and Mining 13, no. 1: 74.
Darius, P., and F. Stephany. 2022. “How the Far-Right Polarises Twitter: ‘Hashjacking’ as a Disinformation Strategy in Times of COVID-19.” In Complex Networks and Their Applications X: Volume 2, Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Complex Networks and Their Applications COMPLEX NETWORKS 2021, edited by R. M. Benito, C. Cherifi, H. Cherifi, E. Moro, L. M. Rocha, and M. Sales-Pardo, 100–111. Springer International Publishing.
Deus ex Machina. 2018. “Deus ex Machina Blog.” https://blogs.faz.net/deus/.
de Andrade, A. G. C. 2023. “Liberdade de Expressão e Discurso de Ódio.” Revista Da EMERJ 23, no. 1: 9–34. https://ojs.emerj.com.br/index.php/revistadaemerj/article/view/493.
Donahoe, E. 2017. “Protecting Democracy From Online Disinformation Requires Better Algorithms, not Censorship.” Council on Foreign Relations – Net Politics. https://www.cfr.org/blog/protecting-democracy-online-disinformation-requires-better-algorithms-not-censorship.
Donges, P., and A. Gerner. 2019. “Fachmedien als Policy-Broker: Empirische Befunde zur Vermittlungsleistung in Politikfeldern.” Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft 67, no. 4: 417–436.
Dubois, E., and D. Gaffney. 2014. “The Multiple Facets of Influence: Identifying Political Influentials and Opinion Leaders on Twitter.” American Behavioral Scientist 58, no. 10: 1260–1277.
Dür, A., and G. Mateo. 2014. “Public Opinion and Interest Group Influence: How Citizen Groups Derailed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.” Journal of European Public Policy 21, no. 8: 1199–1217.
Dyer, S. J., and L. Hakkola. 2020. “The Voices of Twitter: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Racial Discourses on Twitter Following the Alt-Right March on Charlottesville, Virginia.” In Twitter, the Public Sphere, and the Chaos of Online Deliberation, edited by K. B. Lutz and K. Veel, 121–149. Palgrave Macmillan.
Eifert, M. 2018. “Das Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz und Plattformregulierung.” In Netzwerkrecht: Die Zukunft des NetzDG und seine Folgen für die Netzwerkkommunikation, edited by M. Eifert and T. Gostomzyk, 9–43. Nomos. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783845293172.
Eifert, M., and T. Gostomzyk. 2018. Netzwerkrecht: Die Zukunft des NetzDG und seine Folgen für die Netzwerkkommunikation. Nomos. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783845293172.
Einfeldt, M. 2024. Strafrechtsdurchsetzung Im Digitalen Raum: Vom Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz (NetzDG) Zum Digital Services Act (DSA). Duncker and Humblot.
Faris, R., H. Roberts, B. Etling, D. Othman, and Y. Benkler. 2015. “Score Another One for the Internet? The Role of the Networked Public Sphere in the US Net Neutrality Policy Debate.” Berkman Center Research Publication No. 2015-4. February 10.
Fichtner, L. 2023. “The Politics of Platform Governance: NetzDG, Democracy, and the Regulation of Content Moderation in Germany.” PhD thesis, Universität Hamburg.
Flick, U. 2018. Doing Triangulation and Mixed Methods. SAGE. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529716634.
Garimella, V. R. K., and I. Weber. 2017. “A Long-Term Analysis of Polarization on Twitter.” Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 11, no. 1: 528–531. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2021.1910390.
Gilardi, F., T. Gessler, M. Kubli, and S. Müller. 2021. “Social Media and Political Agenda Setting.” Political Communication 39, no. 1: 39–60.
Gorwa, R. 2019. “The Platform Governance Triangle: Conceptualising the Informal Regulation of Online Content.” Internet Policy Review 8, no. 2: 1–22. https://doi.org/10.14763/2019.2.1407.
Gorwa, R. 2022. Who Are the Stakeholders in Platform Governance? Center for Open Science. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/ayx8h.
Gorwa, R. 2024. The Politics of Platform Regulation: How Governments Shape Online Content Moderation. Oxford University Press.
Graells-Garrido, E., R. Baeza-Yates, and M. Lalmas. 2020. “Representativeness of Abortion Legislation Debate on Twitter: A Case Study in Argentina and Chile.” In Companion Proceedings of the Web Conference 2020, 765–774.
Habermas, J. 1962. Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit: Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Öffentlichkeit. Hermann Luchterhand.
Haupt, C. E. 2024. “Curbing Hate Speech Online: Lessons From the German Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG).” In Oxford Handbook on Hate Speech, edited by E. Heinze, N. Alkiviadou, T. Herrenberg, S. Parmar and I. Tourkochoriti, University School of Law Research Paper No. 467. https://ssrn.com/abstract=4806195.
Haupt, C. E. 2025. “Democratic Self-Defense.” Fordham Law Review 93: 1377–1426.
Heise Group. 2025. “heise medien.” https://www.heisegroup.de/artikel/heise-medien-3904998.html.
Hepp, A., A. Breiter, and T. N. Friemel. 2018. “Digital Traces in Context—An Introduction.” International Journal of Communication 12: 11.
Himelboim, I., M. Smith, and B. Shneiderman. 2013. “Tweeting Apart: Applying Network Analysis to Detect Selective Exposure Clusters in Twitter.” Communication Methods and Measures 7, no. 3–4: 195–223. https://doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2013.813922.
Hölig, S. 2018. “Eine meinungsstarke Minderheit als Stimmungsbarometer?! Über die Persönlichkeitseigenschaften aktiver Twitterer.” M&K Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft 66, no. 2: 140–169.
Hong, M. 2018. The German Network Enforcement Act and the Presumption in Favour of Freedom of Speech. Verfassungsblog: On Matters Constitutional. https://doi.org/10.17176/20180122-144934.
Hong, S., and D. Nadler. 2016. “The Unheavenly Chorus: Political Voices of Organized Interests on Social Media.” Policy & Internet 8, no. 1: 91–106.
Hunt, K. 2019. “Twitter, Social Movements, and Claiming Allies in Abortion Debates.” Journal of Information Technology and Politics 16, no. 4: 394–410.
Jungherr, A., G. Rivero, G. R. Rodríguez, and D. Gayo-Avello. 2020. Retooling Politics: How Digital Media Are Shaping Democracy. Cambridge University Press.
Kaiser, J., and C. Puschmann. 2017. “Alliance of Antagonism: Counterpublics and Polarization in Online Climate Change Communication.” Communication and the Public 2, no. 4: 371–387. https://doi.org/10.1177/2057047317732350.
Kast, M. 2024. Protestplätze, Partizipationsräume, Parallelwelten: Wissenschaftliche Betrachtung und aktuelle Bewertung von Alternativmedien. University of Bamberg Press.
Katz, L. 1953. “A New Status Index Derived From Sociometric Analysis.” Psychometrika 18, no. 1: 39–43.
Keller, D. 2021. Empirical Evidence of Over-Removal by Internet Companies Under Intermediary Liability Laws: An Updated List. Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2021/02/empirical-evidence-over-removalinternet-companies-under-intermediary-liability-laws.
Kermani, H., and N. Hooman. 2024. “Hashtag Feminism in a Blocked Context: The Mechanisms of Unfolding and Disrupting #Rape on Persian Twitter.” New Media and Society 26, no. 8: 4750–4784.
Klonick, K. 2017. “The New Governors: The People, Rules, and Processes Governing Online Speech.” Harvard Law Review 131: 1598–1670.
Kommers, D. P. 1980. “The Jurisprudence of Free Speech in the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany.” Southern California Law Review 53: 657.
Kosseff, J. 2019. The Twenty-Six Words that Created the Internet. Cornell University Press.
Lauer, S. 2019. Wie ein schwuler Theologe zum Sprachrohr von AfD, IB und Co wurde. Bell Tower: Netz für digitale Gesellschaft. https://www.belltower.news/rechte-medien-wie-ein-schwuler-theologe-zum-sprachrohr-von-afd-ib-und-co-wurde-80379/.
Lima-Strong, C. 2025. Transcript: US House Judiciary Committee on ‘Europe's Threat to American Speech and Innovation’. Tech Policy Press. https://techpolicy.press/transcript-us-house-judiciary-hearing-on-europes-threat-to-american-speech-and-innovation.
Loewenstein, K. 1937. “Militant Democracy and Fundamental Rights, I.” American Political Science Review 31, no. 3: 417–432. https://doi.org/10.2307/1948164.
Logan, A. P., P. M. LaCasse, and B. J. Lunday. 2023. “Social Network Analysis of Twitter Interactions: A Directed Multilayer Network Approach.” Social Network Analysis and Mining 13, no. 1: 65. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-023-01063-2.
Lüdemann, J. 2018. “Privatisierung der Rechtsdurchsetzung in sozialen Netzwerken?” In Netzwerkrecht: Die Zukunft des NetzDG und seine Folgen für die Netzwerkkommunikation, edited by M. Eifert and T. Gostomzyk, 153–168. Nomos.
Magalhães, J. C., C. Iglesias Keller, and R. Gorwa. 2025. The Great Sysop: Elon Musk, X, and the Emergence of Platform Illiberalism. https://osf.io/6grbc_v2/download/?format%3Dpdf&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1758028279284054&usg=AOvVaw321giejpzRG5FZkohJUFii.
Meyer, H., A. K. Peach, L. Guenther, H. E. Kedar, and M. Brüggemann. 2023. “Between Calls for Action and Narratives of Denial: Climate Change Attention Structures on Twitter.” Media and Communication 11, no. 1: 278–292.
Michel, S. 2020. “Journalisten in sozialen Netzwerken: Zur Kritik am ›Social-Media-Journalismus‹.” In Medienkritik: zwischen ideologischer Instrumentalisierung und kritischer Aufklärung, edited by H.-J. Bucher, 188–209. Herbert von Halem Verlag.
Müller-Hansen, F., Y. T. Lee, M. Callaghan, S. Jankin, and J. C. Minx. 2022. “The German Coal Debate on Twitter: Reactions to a Corporate Policy Process.” Energy Policy 169: 113178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2022.113178.
Myers, S. A., A. Sharma, P. Gupta, and J. Lin. 2014. “Information Network or Social Network? The Structure of the Twitter Follow Graph.” In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on World Wide Web, 493–498. ACM.
Netzpolitik.org. 2025. “Über uns.” https://netzpolitik.org/ueber-uns/.
Neumann, T. 2011. Die Piratenpartei Deutschland: Entwicklung und Selbstverständnis. Contumax.
Niedermayer, O. 2013. Die Piratenpartei. Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-19475-2.
Nieuwenhuis, A. 2000. “Freedom of Speech: USA vs. Germany and Europe.” Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 18, no. 2: 195–217.
Page, L., S. Brin, R. Motwani, and T. Winograd. 1999. “The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web.” Technical Report. Stanford Infolab. http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/422/.
Papacharissi, Z., and M. de Fatima Oliveira. 2012. “Affective News and Networked Publics: The Rhythms of News Storytelling on #Egypt.” Journal of Communication 62, no. 2: 266–282.
Papaevangelou, C. 2021. “The Existential Stakes of Platform Governance: A Critical Literature Review.” Open Research Europe 1: 31. https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.13358.2.
Paulitsch, L. 2024. “Gegenerzählungen für ‘Selberdenker’.” Journalistik 7, no. 2: 211–219. https://doi.org/10.1453/2569-152X-22024-14220-de.
Pohlmann, J., A. Barbaresi, and P. Leinen. 2023. “Platform Regulation and ‘Overblocking’—The NetzDG Discourse in Germany.” Communications 48, no. 3: 395–419. https://doi.org/10.1515/commun-2022-0098.
Praet, S., D. Martens, and P. Van Aelst. 2021. “Patterns of Democracy? Social Network Analysis of Parliamentary Twitter Networks in 12 Countries.” Online Social Networks and Media 24: 100154.
Puschmann, C., J. Ausserhofer, and J. Šlerka. 2020. “Converging on a Nativist core? Comparing Issues on the Facebook Pages of the Pegida Movement and the Alternative for Germany.” European Journal of Communication 35, no. 3: 230–248. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323120922068.
Queer.de. 2024. “David Berger wird AfD-Mitglied.” https://www.queer.de/detail.php?article_id=48959.
Recuero, R., R. Araujo, and G. Zago. 2021. “How Does Social Capital Affect Retweets?” Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 5, no. 1: 305–312. https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v5i1.14115.
Rosa, H., J. P. Carvalho, R. Astudillo, and F. Batista. 2018. “Page Rank Versus Katz: Is the Centrality Algorithm Choice Relevant to Measure User Influence in Twitter?” In Interactions Between Computational Intelligence and Mathematics, edited by L. T. Kóczy and J. Medina, 1–9. Springer.
Schulz, W. 2018. Regulating Intermediaries to Protect Privacy Online – The Case of the German NetzDG. Social Science Research Network.
Schwaiger, L. 2022. Gegen die Öffentlichkeit: Alternative Nachrichtenmedien im deutschsprachigen Raum. transcript. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/53573.
Stier, S., L. Posch, A. Bleier, and M. Strohmaier. 2017. “When Populists Become Popular: Comparing Facebook use by the Right-wing Movement Pegida and German Political Parties.” Information, Communication and Society 20, no. 9: 1365–1388. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1328519.
Stier, S., W. J. Schünemann, and S. Steiger. 2018. “Of Activists and Gatekeepers: Temporal and Structural Properties of Policy Networks on Twitter.” New Media & Society 20, no. 5: 1910–1930.
Theil, S. 2018. The German NetzDG: A Risk Worth Taking? VerfBlog. https://doi.org/10.17176/20180208-184652.
Theocharis, Y. 2013. “The Wealth of (Occupation) Networks? Communication Patterns and Information Distribution in a Twitter Protest Network.” Journal of Information Technology & Politics 10, no. 1: 35–56.
Tworek, H. 2017. How Germany Is Tackling Hate Speech. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/germany/2017-05-16/how-germany-tackling-hate-speech.
Valente, M. 2023. Misoginia na internet: Uma década de disputas por direitos. Fósforo.
Wasserman, S., and K. Faust. 1994. “Centrality and prestige.” In Social Network Analysis, 169–219. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511815478.006.
Weichert, S. and Zabel, C., eds. 2009. Die Alpha-Journalisten 2.0: Deutschlands neue Wortführer im Porträt. Herbert von Halem.
Wilman, F. 2022. “The Digital Services Act (DSA)—An Overview.” SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4304586.
Zarbock, L. 2024. “Zwischen Äquidistanz und Antisemitismus: Die Berichterstattung rechter Alternativmedien über den Gazakrieg 2023/24.” In Antisemitismus zwischen Latenz und Leidenschaft, edited by L. Zarbock, S. Richter, M. Seul, F. Thurau, A. Borsch, L. Gärtner, L. Schmidt, and S. Seiler, 1st ed., 243–259. Verlag Barbara Budrich. https://doi.org/10.3224/84743080.