“X is simply broken”: The relationship between political journalists and politicians on social media during the 2025 German federal election campaign

Contemporary election campaigns are marked by a move from political parties and politicians to communicating directly to audiences via social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. In doing so, they deliberately bypass journalistic rigour and scrutiny to focus on more personal messages and storytelling techniques. Scholarship has investigated this from the perspective of social media platform logics and political campaigning but has thus far somewhat neglected the journalistic dimension. Using the case study of the snap German federal elections held in February 2025, this contribution features expert interviews with a diverse range of German political journalists and investigates their perspectives on a) how leading politicians used social media platforms in their campaigns and b) how they use said platforms themselves for news sourcing and diffusion as well as direct communication with politicians. Findings reveal a shift away from X (formerly Twitter) and a stronger focus on more outspoken audiovisual platforms such as TikTok for news sourcing and diffusion purposes, while ascribing growing relevance to LinkedIn and even traditional text messages. Politicians’ messages are perceived as steering away from overt political messages, feeding into the ongoing debate about the depoliticization of political communication.