German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday took her campaign online, fielding questions from YouTube stars in live-streamed interviews aimed at young voters ahead of next month’s general election.
Almost 56,000 people tuned in to watch four young popular YouTube bloggers with a combined audience of around 3mn subscribers quiz Europe’s most powerful leader, who is making her bid for a fourth term in office at the September 24 election.
The topics ranged from women’s rights, through to education, social justice, Turkish-German relations, the refugee crisis, the threat of a third world war and Merkel’s favourite emoji.
“Smiley,” the 63-year-old chancellor said after initially appearing stumped by the question.
“If it’s really good then with a small heart next to it,” said Merkel, who is regularly dubbed the new leader of the free world.
Attempting to ease fears among her viewers about war, Merkel again insisted that was no military solution to the North Korean conflict.
But should people fear a new world war? “No,” replied the chancellor.
One of bloggers, 28-year-old AlexiBexi — or Alexander Boehm — who posts comical German-language renditions of English pop songs and devours Nutella on camera, warned his followers ahead of the Merkel interview that many questions might remain unanswered.
Merkel’s interviewers also included 21-year-old Ischtar Isik, who posts video-blogs about beauty and lifestyle topics, as well as 22-year-old political and psychology student Lisa Sophie.
Also known as “ItsColeslaw,” Sophie has developed a strong following after regularly delving into taboo subjects.
The oldest of the four interviewers, 31-year-old Mirko Drotschmann or the blogger “MrWissen2Go,” says the aim of his videos is to explain historical connections and make the latest news understandable.
Merkel lamented in yesterday’s programme the lack of young people in the nation’s political life after it was pointed out to her how the political parties were often dominated by late-middle-aged men.
The under 30s “vote was as important as the 60-year-olds,” she tried to assure her viewers ahead of next month’s election, which she is the favourite to win.
Still, the chancellor’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian-based Christian Social Union (CSU) allies have a reputation as an older voter’s political bloc and they have struggled to fire up support among younger voters.
A recent YouGov poll showed that only 14% of voters aged between 18 and 29 backed the CDU-CSU, while 44% of those over the age of 60 supported the chancellor’s group.
But apart from those on the live-chat feed backing the right-wing nationalist Alternative for Germany (“Merkel must go”), there were comments lending support to the chancellor: “Merkel — I love you,” said one.
In the end the Merkel programme scored more than 7,800 likes and received the thumbs down from more than 1,870 viewers.
Yesterday’s interview was not the first time that Merkel has taken to the popular video platform to field questions.
In 2015, she was interviewed by German YouTube star LeFloid — in a video that has been watched 5.5mn times.
Helping to lead the way in developing campaign strategies to mobilise voters via online platforms was former US president Barack Obama,
with French President Emmanuel Macron regularly communicating with his electorate using Internet programmes.
“The chancellor is reaching a young target group that is not particularly interested in politics and that is difficult to reach with traditional campaigning methods,” Leipzig university communications analyst Patrick Donges said.




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