There is a certain amount of nervousness in the political sphere as far as the upcoming European elections are concerned. Since it is clear that Donald Trump's election to the US Presidency and the Brexit vote in 2016 were accompanied by Russian disinformation campaigns, concerted interference and manipulation attempts are considered part of every major vote.

In December, the European Commission presented an "action plan against disinformation", Facebook and Google take precautions, think tanks produce a series of strategy papers, and the Munich Security Conference, which begins this Friday, will be behind closed doors in several rounds on the right path to securing the European elections discussed.

That this is not always about Russia's trolls and intelligence services, according to a study by the specialized on extremism research Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) based in London, which will be presented this Friday in Munich. "The Battle for Bavaria" is her striking title. This is about online campaigns of right and right-wing groups in the run-up to the Bavarian state election in October 2018. The results were the SPIEGEL vorab before.

Accordingly, the same methods were used as in the national elections in France, Germany and Italy in the years 2017 and 2018. The aim was always to move the voter mood to the right - in the case of Bavaria, especially in favor of the alternative for Germany (AfD).

The key findings of the study:

1. Different tactics were used

According to the ISD analysis, the right-wing activists use three main means. First, they try to discredit the political "opponent". For example, a forum was specifically looking for dirt ("dirt") to the Green top candidate Katharina Schulze, which could be shared. Elsewhere, fake Greens and SPD election posters were produced and distributed. They show a mosque and the sentence "We are Europe" or a man with a small child by the hand and the text "Love knows no age." In addition, links to misleading statistics or simply to material from the AfD were shared.

These were targeted misrepresentations of real events. For example, a "get-acquainted offer" between locals and refugees in a Bavarian town in right-wing circles made "speed dating with illegal immigrants". The spin later also attacked the AfD itself. The event was finally canceled.

The second means was the spreading of one's own message. For example, certain accounts would have spread AfD-friendly hashtags like #Merkelmussweg or #AfDwirkt, according to the ISD study.

Third, the legitimacy of the election was questioned. A campaign, according to ISD, has cast doubt on whether votes are counted correctly. There was therefore a call to register as an "election observer" - which, however, was targeted only at "non-Jews". Posts with calls to register have been shared on Facebook more than 1000 times.

2. The right movements mingle

Who is behind these campaigns? In any case, no state or secret service, that is the overriding knowledge. "Other states did not seem overly determined to interfere in the Bavarian election campaign," the study said, "non-governmental networks of international right-wing extremist activists were much more active."

Among them, however, there is no central control or stringent organization, says Julia Ebner, co-author of the ISD study. "It's a loose network of right-wing online activists." That, in turn, extends beyond the German borders. So you have found strong overlaps on Twitter between accounts that have made both for a hardcore Brexit mood, and before the parliamentary elections in Germany and Sweden.

In fact, calls to influence the election were written in English, probably for an international community to understand. Conversely, according to ISD, English manuals were also translated into German, for example how to create fake accounts.

In Germany itself, the active right-wing groups have changed. Relatively new is the ISD analysis according to about a German offshoot of QAnon, the conspiracy theorists from the United States. In posts, they used Qanon-specific hashtags on the one hand, Donald Trump's slogan "Drain the swamp" on the other, and the AfD slogan "Merkel has to go".

While QAnon was first noticed to a greater extent before the Bavarian elections, the right-wing net movement "Reconquista Germanica" lost its importance, according to the ISD study. This had caused a stir at the beginning of 2018, among other things, the satirist Jan Böhmermann had proclaimed in response to the counter-movement "Reconquista Internet" and was then the target of online trolls.

3. It's about more than Facebook

If you consider right-wing campaigns as a phenomenon on individual platforms, think too briefly. "The activists use a whole ecosystem of tools," says Ebner. For example, the 4chan discussion board shared instructions and meme templates. These could then be disseminated by various accounts in social media such as Facebook or Twitter, where there are the largest ranges.

Campaigns on social media were taken up again by right-wing YouTube creators, who commented on them in videos or sometimes even fed them live reports. Videos of politically dissenters were flooded with comments and bad reviews. Internal arrangements took place in closed groups, for example via the messenger app Telegram or the chat platform Discord.

The crucial question in this context is always: How successful was that? "Whether they influenced the election result, we do not know," admits ISD expert Ebner. The study says it would take much more sophisticated methods and tools than those available today to measure the impact of such campaigns.