Interruptions in German Parliamentary Speeches: Sentiment Expressed by the Alternative for Germany

Since the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland - AfD) entered the German Bundestag in 2017, the tone of legislative debates has been described as more confrontational, especially along a dividing line between the AfD and all other parties. While the analysis of legislative debates mostly focuses on the speeches, members of parliament who are not speaking at the time can also join in the debates with verbal interruptions and auditory reactions. Since a provocative communication style is part of the „populist agenda” and explicitly voiced as a strategy by the AfD, are the AfD’s interruptions also more confrontational, and do they express a more negative sentiment compared to the established parties? The few existing empirical studies focus on regional parliaments or the analysis of single debates, while indicating a more confrontational stance taken by the AfD. To enable a large-scale quantitative analysis at the federal level, a data set consisting of all reactions and interruptions in debates of the 17th and 19th German Bundestag was created from the original transcripts and expanded by adding basic demographic variables for each member of parliament. A stratified random sample of 18,000 interruptions was manually coded to assess the sentiment expressed. The main categories were the presence of negativity and incivility, i.e. violations of agreed communication norms. Preliminary results indicate that the AfD has a higher proportion of negativity and especially incivility in interruptions than all other parties. While the general level has increased for all parties, the AfD appears to be the main driver of this development, with the other parties adjusting their behaviour accordingly. Furthermore, a broad range of political science and sociology research questions can be answered using this data set, which could be further expanded with person- or party-level variables.