Consequences of Data-Driven Campaigns for Democracies

Online political micro-targeting is on the rise, especially after the unexpected outcome of the US presidential elections in 2016, the Brexit vote in the UK, and several recent elections in Europe. However, it is unclear if micro-targeting is an actual threat to democracy. Studies have examined the use of such practices by political actors and studies have shown that peoples characteristics and ideas can be precisely predicted from the personal data they leave online on for instance social media. There is also some evidence that shows that general targeting practices for commercial practices, for instance on social media, lead to more clicks and purchases. Yet, whether or not these online targeting practices actually manipulate voters, ultimately affecting elections and democracies, is unknown. The proposed project will tackle this lack of knowledge by investigating (1) how organizations shape elections campaigns by targeting potential voters during elections, (2) the existing constitutional and legislative frameworks in the European countries and to what extent the regulatory frameworks ultimately may undermine democratic processes. In addition, we focus on audiences by investigating (3) how microtargeting is perceived by the general public and (4) to what extent these targeting practices actually affect voters. The proposed project will be the first to identify and compare the use of different online micro-targeting techniques in different countries (i.e., Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and United Kingdom), and secondly, the project will have a strong focus on the actual effects of these techniques on voters. In addition to extensive literature work and policy analysis, we use a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods to answer the research questions posed. For instance, we conduct a multi-wave panel survey to study public perceptions of micro-targeting in the participating countries. The effect of micro-targeting techniques will be studied using different experimental research design in and beyond the laboratory.

Data-Driven Campaigns: Intended and Unintended Consequences for Democracy (DATADRIVEN) Online political micro-targeting is an important part of election campaigns since the unexpected outcome of the US presidential elections in 2016, the Brexit vote in the UK, and several recent elections across Europe. However, it is still unclear if micro-targeting is an actual threat to democracy. Studies have examined the use of such practices by political actors and studies have shown that peoples characteristics and ideas can be precisely predicted from the personal data they leave online on for instance social media. There is also some evidence that shows that general targeting practices for commercial practices, for instance on social media, lead to more clicks and purchases. Yet, whether or not these online targeting practices actually manipulate voters, ultimately affecting elections and democracies, was long unknown. This NORFACE Governance project tackled this lack of knowledge by investigating (1) how organizations shape elections campaigns by targeting potential voters during elections, (2) the existing constitutional and legislative frameworks in the European countries and to what extent the regulatory frameworks ultimately may undermine democratic processes. In addition, we focused on audiences by investigating (3) how microtargeting is perceived by the general public and (4) to what extent these targeting practices actually affect voters. The project is one of the first to identify and compare the use of different online micro-targeting techniques in different countries (i.e., Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and United Kingdom), and secondly, the project had a strong focus on the actual effects of these techniques on voters. In addition to extensive literature work and policy analysis, we used a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods to answer the research questions posed. For example, we conducted several multi-wave panel survey to study public perceptions of micro-targeting in the participating countries, showing that microtargeting does indeed change voters voting preferences. We explored new forms citizens develop to avoid microtargeting, and we could show that there are ways to increase citizens' competence of dealing with this targeting.