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Campaign Microtargeting: Democracy in the Age of Digital Surveillance

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 Campaigns have always been about how they present themselves to the world but the Internet changed everything with micro-targeting as a form of psychological science. No longer will you see one big message put out for everyone, instead, you’ll see hyper-personalized advertising based upon your data profile. Examples of this include demographic data, search history, your physical location, purchasing behavior and even personality type that can be determined through an algorithm. Cambridge Analytica exemplifies this paradigm shift. Millions of Facebook user profiles were scraped without their knowledge or permission and then Cambridge Analytica developed psychographic models to categorize them emotionally (vulnerable, fearful, aggressive etc.) and psychologically (e.g., risk-averse, or open) to develop messaging that would resonate with Trump supporters, reluctant moderate voters and disengage young voters. In other words, this was not persuasion it was data driven behavior modifica...
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Infotainment: When News Becomes Entertainment

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News on cable television is a business. It’s ratings (audience) that fund the operation of a cable network not the civics lesson. Cable television has to create an entertaining environment in order for it to attract and retain its audience; therefore, it creates a unique blend of entertainment and news by using dramatic visual effects, opposing viewpoints from panelists, "breaking news" banners, and emotional commentaries. The model created by this approach is referred to as "infotainment." Infotainment is a style of journalism where the focus is placed on creating conflict rather than providing complexity. In addition to focusing on complex issues and policy proposals, journalists often focus on the scandalous behavior of politicians, their "gaffes," and the "winning" candidate. In doing so, voters become less educated about the workings of government and more invested in their local "political teams." Journalist Thomas Patterson state...
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The Echo Chamber Effect: When Democracy Becomes Algorithmic

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  Algorithms on social media create an environment where all you will find are things that validate your views so you will engage with it. Because of this you don't come into contact with differing opinions. Any differing opinion seems like a rant from someone who is either angry at you for your views or someone who is just plain crazy. The reason for this is that the differing opinion comes from an extreme community that the algorithm found when it was searching for "opinion" in relation to your views. This leads to Affective Polarization: a growing intolerance for opposing political identities. Social media algorithms reward anger and certainly over anything else. For example, the post that causes outrage gets more views than the post that explains how a bill works. So, the algorithms show the loud voices, not the best-informed voices. The Digital Divide has now moved from Left-Right to Us-Them. To break through the echo chamber, we need to intentionally learn Media Lit...
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Citizen Journalism: Liberation or Information Chaos?

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 Smart phones changed regular people into media creators. Videos of protests, live streams of people's interactions with the police, and election footage, in real time, are often seen by millions before the big news outlets even start to look at them. The big news outlets were forced to cover a story that they would have otherwise ignored because of citizen journalism. The George Floyd case is an example of what I am talking about. If there hadn't been video shot by a bystander, the whole country would probably never have had a chance to see how the case developed like it did. But while creating your own news gives you more freedom, it has drawbacks too. While you are creating news, you don't have editors filtering out bad information; nor do you have people explaining context for what you just showed on TV; and finally, you don't have anyone verifying the accuracy of the information that you are showing. So, when you shoot a moment of history with your smart phone, you...
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Memes as Propaganda: Political Humor or Political Weapon?

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 Humor has been used historically to reduce skepticism, however, when using it as a persuasive tool, (humor) is often less scrutinized by others, therefore creating a higher potential for acceptance of the intended message. The study of social psychology refers to this method of acceptance as peripheral persuasion - the intended message is being processed on a peripheral level; or in other words, the message is being accepted without a rational evaluation process.Memetic warfare models demonstrate how images can be utilized to create a narrative that is perceived as legitimate by mainstream audiences. Memes have been used during major global events such as the Brexit vote and the 2016 US presidential election, and were used by both supporters of leaving the EU and Trump. These "memes" have been created to provide a simple visual representation of an issue, while also providing a sense of legitimacy through the use of humor. By utilizing humor, these messages have been able to...
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Election Night Narratives: Who Controls the Story?

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 On Election Night, television broadcasters claim to "report the results." In reality, these broadcast systems serve as narrative generators. Each network emphasizes a different aspect of a story about the election (the momentum behind winners or losers; the emotional response of voters; the potential threat to established institutions). This allows the media to frame its ability to create a definition of what is at stake and how audiences should make sense of the unfolding events. Consider the 2020 Presidential Election: Fox News was the first network to declare Arizona for Joe Biden, which generated a great deal of outrage from Fox's own loyal audience. MSNBC framed the election as an opportunity to protect democratic norms. CNN emphasized data-driven trends and changes in demographics. Although all three networks reported on the same numbers, they presented very different political realities. Over time, election coverage has changed from being strictly informative to e...
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The TikTok Election: When Algorithms Choose What We See

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 Rather than transmitting information based on journalism's established norms of objectivity, fairness and factuality, TikTok's algorithm transmits information which gets instant engagement via likes, shares, rewatches, comments and emotional reactions; thus, as an outlet for political messaging, the platform optimizes its transmission of content for "virality" (for how quickly and widely it can be transmitted) rather than for accuracy. During both the 2022 election cycle and the 2024 election cycle, news cycles on the platforms often started with the emergence of a video on TikTok before many traditional journalists had even responded. Thus, a single 30 second video from a political creator/influencer/meme page could misrepresent a policy or take a politician's words completely out of context and, by the time journalists fact checked the video, the video would have been viewed by millions of people on their phones, tablets or computers. A media effects analysis o...
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