Question: If respondents should also cover messenger services in their answer, one possibility would be to adapt the question by naming exemplary social media of this kind. In order to avoid confusion with the term "follow", in the case of social media where this term is not usually used, we also recommend listing the examples in an explanation rather than in the question itself.
The question wording we recommend is therefore as follows:
"Do you follow politicians or political parties on social media or do you sub-scribe to corresponding channels? If yes, from which parties?
This includes, for example, liking Facebook pages, following Twitter channels, but also subscribing to WhatsApp or Telegram groups."
Response format: No changes recommended.
Question 7 asked the respondents whether they follow "politicians or political parties" on social media. The majority of respondents (n = 6) stated that they do not follow "politicians or political parties" on social media. Three persons answered question 7 in the affirmative and made use of the option of multiple answers. After some initial hesitation, respondent 04 opted for the answer category "Other" and added that she followed the party "DIE PARTEI".
1. How do respondents go about answering the question?
When asked how they went about answering the question and what social media they thought of during the process, most respondents (n = 7 ) indicated Facebook and Instagram. The platforms Twitter and YouTube were also mentioned, but only by three test persons. In most cases, persons first thought of their own social media use and considered whether they had political subscriptions there:
2. Is the term "follow" sufficiently familiar?
When asked what the persons understood by "follow," most responded with synonyms such as "subscribe," which is already included in the question text itself, or English terms such as "likes" or "followers."
Other persons explained their understanding of "follow" in the specific context of specific social media:
Two persons also understood "following" to mean looking at and reading posts, without naming active following:
Since for the majority of the test persons the verb "follow" is associated with various social media, it can be assumed that the question is understood in the intended way. However, messenger services such as WhatsApp and Telegram were not mentioned by the test persons in connection with "follow". If such messenger services are also to be covered, the question should be rephrased accordingly.
