Estonian National Elections — Ignoring online trolling or being trolls?

The far-right party EKRE and their members are the most common subject of political social media posts by far. That shouldn’t be surprising — their statements are usually extremely controversial or even downright ridiculous.

In the run-up to Estonia’s Parliamentary Elections on 5 March 2023, you can find plenty of memes and tweets poking fun at EKRE, and plenty of people challenging their populist rhetoric on Twitter. Even though the platform is one of the least used in the country, with it often said that “only politicians and journalists are on Twitter in Estonia.” The Twitter community is almost exclusively liberal, without a single EKRE politician or member in sight. They know that their voters are not on this platform, so the politicians from EKRE don’t care to engage on the site, even with all the discussions going on about them. Even if—by some miracle—a more conservative person does end up there, they will quickly find that the wider audience doesn’t share their views.