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One can assume that Angela Merkel thinks of a lot shortly before press conferences, but not of fuckboys.
At RBB, or rather at the social media team of the young radio station Fritz, it should be the other way around.
All that remains of Merkel's appearance are snippets of pictures and videos, which are combined with pithy sayings.
The result: a picture-text collage on the social network Instagram with the question “How did you know he was a fuckboy?” Including a snapshot of Angela Merkel with an expression on her face that should say “I told you right away” .
One does not really know what a so-called "fuckboy" (a sexually active, incapable of bonding man, i.e. editor) has to do with the Chancellor.
And one wonders how such an account relates to the public service mandate.
These photo montages of text and images, also known as memes, are editorially produced by the RBB and distributed on Instagram.
More than 124,000 people follow the Fritz channel “Same Memes”, which, according to RBB, is aimed primarily at 17 to 19-year-old girls.
With this, the RBB shows that you can argue about humor, but as a public broadcaster you can not only reach fans of the “Musikantenstadl”, but also young people.
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And the RBB is not alone in this.
Public broadcasters have built up their presence in online formats in social networks in recent years, regardless of their media libraries.
The reach of broadcasters is enormous, especially on Instagram.
ARD, ZDF, Arte and Funk, the millennial network of ARD and ZDF, operate more than 200 accounts on the platform with a potential reach of almost 21 million users.
For comparison: together, the channels of “Bild”, “FAZ”, “SZ”, “Zeit”, “Spiegel” and WELT could reach around 3.7 million people.
Since users can subscribe to multiple channels, these are only potential ranges.
Nevertheless, the fee-financed distortion of competition becomes clear.
In contrast to ARD, the ZDF is as spartan as it is efficient: the Mainz broadcaster only operates 14 accounts, groups topics under “ZDF Info”, “ZDF Sport” or “ZDF Kultur” and reaches an average of 324,000 people per account.
The most successful is the satirical channel “Today Show” with 1.8 million followers.
Quantity instead of quality
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What stands out: Not every broadcast has its own account.
On the “ZDF Heute” channel, for example, in addition to news programs, content from “Maybrit Illner” or “Morgenmagazin” is summarized.
According to ZDF, the goal is not for each editorial team to have its own account.
Rather, it is about showing the highlights from the program.
The broadcasters of the ARD, however, tend to target the masses.
In doing so, they are following their program principles, which state that the Internet is characterized by "an uncountable wealth of information and services as well as a commercial environment".
ARD gallantly transfers this knowledge to its offerings and has more than 150 active Instagram accounts in terms of information abundance.
The front runner is WDR with 35 accounts, closely followed by Südwestrundfunk with 27 and Bayerischer Rundfunk with 25. Saarländischer Rundfunk, the mini-broadcasting company from the mini-federal state, limits itself to two.
While the commercial environment, the competition not financed by fees, is busy using the social networks profitably, the ARD “Morgenmagazin” (41,300 followers) and the ARD “Mittagsmagazin” (16,000 followers) treat themselves to their own accounts.
The vegan recipes from the ARD studio in New Delhi hardly matter, as do the ten other accounts from the studios abroad from Stockholm to Moscow.
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In its program principles for online offers, the ARD also stipulates that the selection of topics should be based on the criteria of “comprehensive information, diversity of topics and program quality”.
That can mean anything and everything.
Strictly speaking, however, it should mean that accounts are only set up if the topic is not already being dealt with by an ARD sender on a network.
This would have to apply in particular to online offers that, unlike the third programs originally broadcast in a linear fashion, can be accessed anywhere.
Accordingly, there are few arguments in favor of several dozen social media teams doing the same work in double, triple or multiple structures.
With a generous interpretation, the regionality argument may justify four MDR accounts (“MDR”, “MDR Saxony-Anhalt”, “MDR Saxony” and “MDR Thuringia”).
But the climatic differences between the catchment area of the Central German and Bavarian radio do not justify the two lavishly produced garden channels "MDR Garten" and "Querbeet Bayern".
Wooden dildos and laboratory meat
Nevertheless, ARD emphasized to WELT that “a lot of exchange and cooperation” was taking place.
A look at the content of the accounts shows how little consultation and how much topic overlap actually occurs.
On behalf of the SWR, the “eco-checkers” explain in their “F * ck for Future” format which wooden dildos, made from regional spruce wood and free of harmful substances, lead to more climate-neutral pleasure.
The WDR stays on its “climate neutral” channel with the lust for meat and researches how long it will take until laboratory meat can be found in the supermarket.
Both accounts are aimed on the same network at the same environmentally conscious target group who are interested in climate-neutral alternatives to conventional products.
In response to a request from WELT, ARD explains that the overarching goal of the accounts is "to reach users with socially relevant topics and objective reporting".
In addition to the fan account for Eintracht Frankfurt, “Football Two Thousand”, operated by Hessischer Rundfunk, climate and Corona seem to have social relevance.
With objective reporting, you might not want a Schalke fan account for the WDR, but rather an abstinence from the political list like the Instagram account of the science program “Quarks”.
The wide-reaching account with almost 900,000 followers uses colorful infographics to explain why “vaccination nationalism” is a problem, how harmful a week's shopping is for the environment or how large companies avoid paying taxes in Germany.
However, it is not questioned, for example, where the term vaccination nationalism comes from and that it is also used by defenders of the government to cover up the current vaccination debacle.
Wouldn't it be the job of journalism to question exactly that?
Political coloring
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The design, which is intended to suggest a journalistic balance, is also misleading: In the style of a fact check, reasons are provided in six bullet points why the corona numbers have to be pushed towards zero.
There are no arguments against the underlying idea of NoCovid and ZeroCovid, it is just mentioned that they also exist.
A supposed information graphic on the subject of corona infection risk in the car is similarly politically colored.
A graphic explains in a cumbersome manner that a certain way of opening the car windows should be particularly effective in minimizing infections.
However, cycling is praised as a really effective solution in a subsequent graphic.
This may give a city dweller with a nine-to-five job a sublime feeling, but it certainly doesn't help anyone who is dependent on a car due to poor infrastructure or shift work.
Under the guise of science, it is more about serving certain sentiments than actually presenting scientific findings.
A similarly tendentious selection of topics can be found on Funk.
A large part of the more than 50 Instagram accounts of the public youth network touch on the topic of sustainability, which is very commercial on Instagram - from the natural cosmetics account “Shine & Nature” to the vegan cooking channel “Rosa kocht green”.
But who, if not the young network of ZDF and ARD, has so little financial pressure and, above all, the task of looking less at the reach and more at the clarification of the complex interrelationships of the climate crisis?
Instead, these accounts give the impression that the climate catastrophe can be brought under control through the right lifestyle and the consumption of natural cosmetics or menstrual cups made of silicone.
This public-law product placement plays down the actual problem and does not meet the self-imposed requirement of making a contribution to imparting education and knowledge.
These purchase decisions, which are almost irrelevant for the life cycle assessment, are certainly not the solution to the greatest challenge of future generations.
Non-transparent costs
None of the broadcasters provide information on the costs of social media and Instagram activities.
Instead, reference is made to the general telemedia costs of the commission for determining the financial needs of broadcasters (KEF).
The KEF puts the costs for telemedia from ARD, ZDF, Deutschlandradio and Arte at around 1.4 billion euros for a period from 2021 to 2024.
That is 20 percent more than in the previous contribution period.
Since telemedia includes the online activities of the media libraries, audio libraries, live streams, apps, web radio, podcasts and social media, it is not transparent how high the cost of playing on networks such as Instagram is.
Added to this is Funk with around 184 million euros for the same period.
Again, there is no information about how expensive it is to create content for social networks.
The broadcasters alone decide which new Instagram channels are launched.
The telemedia mandate passed in 2019 enabled the broadcasters to offer independent online offers independently of the television program and explicitly also to play their content more intensely than before via third-party platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and so on.
This was justified with the need to primarily reach young viewers who are not likely to be approached via the classic television program.
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The so-called offer autonomy of the broadcasters, i.e. their free decision about the conception of content, serves primarily as a legitimation.
There is also explicitly no limit to the number of channels that a broadcaster may record on a third-party platform.
From the point of view of private sector actors, this can be viewed critically, especially with regard to Instagram.
Since the network does not yet allow videos to be monetized with the help of advertising, there is no funding basis for video production.
At the same time, the network only allows links to your own homepage to a limited extent.
This means that a publisher or private broadcaster either has to accept losses on Instagram or operate a very strong internal cross-subsidization while competing for the attention of users with dozens of public service accounts without financial pressure.
Mission missed
On request, ARD and ZDF stated that there were no dedicated positions for Instagram.
Rather, the impression is given that the maintenance of the network is an editorial sideline for individual editors.
With more than 200 lavishly operated accounts with a diverse range of videos and animations, that seems rather unlikely.
Public broadcasting must be where the (future) contributors are.
Social platforms are an essential part of this.
But those who answer the demand for diversity primarily with quantity are missing their mandate.