Both the 2016 presidential elections in the United States and the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom had surprising outcomes to many. However, two years later, it was revealed that a new way of shifting elections had been discovered. Cambridge Analytica had bought the data of 50 million Facebook users to create political microtargeted ads to switch voting in their clients’ favour, with clients being both the Republican party and pro-Brexit parties. Former director of business development at Cambridge Analytica, Brittany Kaiser, states that governments consider this communication tactic as “weapons-grade” (Amer & Noujaim, 2019; Dwilson, 2019; Mills,2019).
So, what happened exactly? This situation has to do with the approach that certain parties took to monetise data: creating value with personal information. Mrs. Kaiser calls data “the most valuable asset on earth in the Netflix documentary: The Great Hack. Cambridge Analytica’s strategy evolved around buying private user information from social media platforms like Facebook and analysing it. Next up, micro-targeted political adverts were created to sway voters’ political opinions (Amer & Noujaim, 2019).
Mrs. Kaiser states that not everyone’s opinion can or needs to be changed. Key is to identify and target the narrow group of people that can be persuaded: micro-targeting. This is possible with big data and exactly what Cambridge Analytica did by harvesting personal data. Certain people received advertisements that told them exactly what they needed to hear to be nudged into voting for a certain party, adverts personalised and tailored with a scary precision. The approach did not even primarily focus on convincing voters for a cause, but on shaming the competition which worked just as, if not more successfully (Amer & Noujaim, 2019; Sharp, 2020; Mills, 2019).
Why the uproar, you might ask? The revelation created outrage around data security on social media and even democracy in a digital society. There is debate about Facebook intentionally violating data security and anti-competition laws to monetise data. Selling personal user data and allowing adverts to be extremely personalised and solely promoting one political view, often even showing misleading and contradicting messages. To have honest political debate and fair campaigns, however, voters need to have a shared understanding of what different parties stand for so that a fair decision can be made (Mills, 2019; Sharp, 2020).
Micro-targeting in political adverts might well be the most powerful tool to win an election during the digital age. However, the practice is flawed, considered by many as unethical, illegal and against the foundations of democracy (Sharp, 2020).
Sources:
Amer, K. and Noujaim, J. (2019). The Great Hack. United States: Netflix.
Dwilson, S. D. (2019). ‘The Great Hack’: Cambridge Analytica’s Weapons-Grade Communication Tactics. Heavy. https://heavy.com/entertainment/2019/07/weapons-grade-communication-cambridge-analytica/
Mills, S. (2019). How data can win you an election. Medium. https://towardsdatascience.com/how-data-can-win-you-an-election-3093b0bf76ab
Sharp, E. (2020). For a healthy democracy, Facebook must halt micro-targeted political ads. Web Foundation. https://webfoundation.org/2020/01/for-a-healthy-democracy-facebook-must-halt-micro-targeted-political-ads/
Image found on: https://www.martianpassage.com/culture/digital-voting
Very relevant topic regarding the upcoming elections. Since these practices are now known to the public, do you still see them having as much impact as in 2016?
Hey Rick, thanks for your comment.
I believe the impact will remain very big. A lot of things have changed, but a lot of fundamental things have stayed the same. Cambridge Analytica took the blame of 2016 and is no longer in business and Facebook has updated some ads policies now (you now have the button: “why am I seeing this ad” and some fake information messages are banned). Twitter and Google have taken bigger steps, however. Twitter has banned al political adverts and Google has limited them considerably.
Social media are still as relevant as before and Facebook seems to be unwilling to take responsibility like their competitors do. As the largest social media platform, this says a lot. There have been multiple interrogations by the US house and senate and multiple suggestions have been done, but as of yet, Facebook is only making incremental changes. Instead, Facebook call for governmental regulation for online political ads. I don’t believe there will be considerable enough changes before the 2020 elections, however.
Hi Joram, thank you for your reply. Fair point,while there is more awareness now, it does not seem like the problem has been solved. If Facebook is waiting on the government for regulations then it will definitely be too late for this year’s election. We”ll have to see what the developments are around November then!
Yes Rick, I am afraid that the value of data is speaking here. As my blog stated, data is the most valuable asset on earth. Facebook realises this as well. The company obviously relies on ad revenues as a start and has now found a new way to make money by monetising its data. I do not believe they will give this up willingly and governmental intervention is needed. However, people still fail to understand just how much their user data is worth to these companies. If this understanding becomes common knowledge and people will demand change as a result, I believe legislation will become possible very quickly indeed.
A silver lining is that Twitter and Google did realise the impact of micro-targeting in political ads and stopped this willingly. Maybe Facebook can be forced to follow their lead or open up about their practices, with the aim to limit the credibility of Facebook ads.