(Corrects paragraphs 14-15 of Sept. 13 story to clarify background on Falun Gong, and the German edition of the Epoch Times and its coverage of issues also of interest to the AfD)
* Alternative for Germany dominates Twitter and Facebook battles
* Aggressive focus on migration polarises politics
* Little 'fake' news but posts often sensationalist, one-sided
By Douglas Busvine
FRANKFURT, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and its supporters were far more active and adept than mainstream parties in promoting their agenda on social media in the run-up to last year's election success, a report published on Thursday shows.
The nationalist, anti-immigration party won seats in the national parliament for the first time in September, with 12.6 percent of the vote, after generating more engagement for its message on Twitter and Facebook than its opponents.
Half of the retweeted messages during the campaign were about the AfD, and its Facebook posts were shared five times more than those of any other party, according to the biggest study yet of online activity ahead of the Sept. 2017 election https://www.ub.tum.de/tumuniversitypress/titel/social-media-report-2017-german-federal-elections.
Now, as regional elections loom this autumn in Bavaria and Hesse, the party is gaining further traction with relentless posting on issues such as crime committed by migrants, which is widely shared by its supporters.
"They use very aggressive and polarising messages - that causes people to react more," said Juan Carlos Medina Serrano of the Technical University of Munich's political data science team, which wrote the report.
The AfD, together with far-right fringe groups, was quick to join protests over the fatal stabbing of a man in the eastern city of Chemnitz last month, for which two asylum seekers from Iraq and Syria were arrested.
It has also hammered away at the issue on social media: "Chemnitz has been in the top 10 hashtags in Germany for the last two weeks," Medina Serrano said.
SUPPORT STILL RISING
Despite condemnation from mainstream parties and commentators for marching alongside neo-Nazis, the AfD has raised its national support into the mid- to high teens, recent surveys suggest.
AfD spokesman Michael Pfalzgraf said the party used social media to communicate with supporters and understand their concerns to help it formulate its political demands.
He declined to give details on its social media budget, but said a big part of its social media work was done by volunteers.
As with the U.S. presidential election of 2016, there have been concerns that voters in Germany are being influenced by 'fake' news, but the 60-page study found that the spread of such disinformation was not significant.