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Political Campaigns Mining Online Data To Target Voters
New submitter nicoles writes with this quote from an AP report:
"The Romney and Obama campaigns are spending heavily on television ads and other traditional tools to convey their messages. But strategists say the most important breakthrough this year is the campaigns' use of online data to raise money, share information and persuade supporters to vote. The practice, known as 'microtargeting,' has been a staple of product marketing. Now it's facing the greatest test of its political impact in the race for the White House. ... The Romney team spent nearly $1 million on digital consulting in April and Obama at least $300,000. ... Campaigns use microtargeting to identify potential supporters or donors using data gleaned from a range of sources, especially their Internet browsing history. A digital profile of each person is then created, allowing the campaigns to find them online and solicit them for money and support."
With the combination of this and search engines trying to tailor results to individual users, can we expect to see even more polarization between supporters of the major parties?
Palm trees and 8
Are you anti-war, pro-bill of rights, and anti-deficit spending? If not then you're not getting any dollars from me Romney or Obama.
But I guess you already knew that from my web surf history. "Running-up 2 trillion in debt is unpatriotic!" Yeah. I agree Candidate Obama. You ran up almost 3x that amount; Romney looks set to do the same.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
For those of us who wish to use social networking and other friendly but intrusive aspects of the web...If you haven't already, you better start scrubbing your visible online information. Reduce your online presence.
A good place to start viewing your publicly available information is http://www.pipl.com/
From there you can decide whether or not it is acceptable information and take the appropriate measures.
"A voter who has indicated an interest in a candidate and then views a video on YouTube is likely to see a 15- or 30-second campaign ad, called a pre-roll, pop up. A box will appear after 5 seconds asking if the person wants to continue viewing the ad. Campaigns only pay for ads the viewer watches through to completion."
I think I've found a way to hurt Romney financially.
Sweet.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Unfortunately, it feels like the vast majority of voters are stuck in their childhood-naivety in believing politics is just unimportant and they should just vote for whoever they "like" the most, turning the presidency into a high-school level popularity contest. At this point, why not just give both candidates an FB page and decide who becomes the next president by whoever has the most likes? This is the type of response massive advertising will bring.
Why can't we make this type of advertising illegal for public offices. Perhaps instead, a consolidated web-based resource should be constructed where each candidate (including individuals running separately from any political party affiliation, and without bias towards those affiliations) is given the same space to identify themselves and their beliefs, and which consolidates resources on the person, their activities within government (both positive and negative), and any interviews/debate type questions they've answered. Also, perhaps some kind of Q&A type service (like a reddit AMA, except less chaotic), so that people can get more information on the stances of the candidates. I envision something sort-of like the "we the people" petition system except much more candid and less worthless, since it entails asking questions to a candidate at large and having popular questions answered sincerely (rather than deferring to media shills and mouth-taped panelists being the only ones that get to ask questions outside of showing up at a town hall and hoping you get called on to ask a question). Most importantly, these things would be immortalized, really showing which candidates hold true to their responses, giving us an ability to objectively score winning candidates on their performance going forward.
Then, armed with something like that, where we can actually read up on all the candidates and find ones we align ourselves most with (and more importantly, who appear to be most beneficial to our country), we then head to the court houses to vote. Not this ass-backwards "see a name on TV, go vote for them because he said something you agree with in the commercial" nonsense. Terrible, the current system is.
Frontline's eight year old documentary called The Persuaders (specifically chapter 5, though it's all quite interesting) showed the pollsters going door to door, but before knocking they got all your data from Axciom or Lexis so they could tell you EXACTLY what you want to hear. Disingenuous? Nahh, it's just politics.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
"Both sides have absolutely no idea how to appeal to the average voter." -> Well, duh! It's hard to talk with a silver spoon in your mouth. Plus the only time they speak with the average voter is while they are running an election campaign; and even then, they ask questions like "You are voting for me, right?" and "What do I have to do to get you to contribute to my fund?"
On a side note, I love how they attempt to fix the difficulties with the Financials industry. Aside from saddling the taxpayer with the bailouts (dumbest move, politically, anywhere, ever), I get to enjoy listening to the cacophony of attempts to regulate or deregulate said industry. We have one party, who wants to blindly remove laws -> "Yes, let us remove the laws which introduced a trade barrier into this market, while we remove the laws which stipulate that selling fraudulent securities to buyers would be punished harshly"; the other party, on the other hand, wants to blindly add laws -> "Yes, let add the law that forbids trading outfits from driving up the price of a stock moments before they put through a client's purchase order, while we add a law that puts the taxpayer on the hook for millions of extremely-risky mortgages." I swear to God, it's like that (spam) scene in Monty Python where no matter what pick off the menu, it has to come with a side order of corruption.
Me: "So, what I'd like is for you to drop the protectionist policies that have unduly enriched the few while thieving the rest of us; I'd also like to have this thieving / fraud nonsense go away."
Party of Purple: "Sure. Sure. We'll do all of that, and we'll also include this law which charges people excessive amounts to buy or sell various positions."
Me: "Umm, no. I want what I asked for, not that extra bit."
Party of Purple: "Yes, we're giving you what you asked for."
Me: "But not that 'charging people excessive amounts' bit, right?"
Party of Purple: "*"
Me: "Hello? I don't want that positions thing to be a part of this legislation."
Party of Purple: "But it has to be. That's the only way it will pass!"
Me: "That's right. I don't want that part to pass into law."
Party of Purple: "But we already wrote it up with that in there."
Me: "Then write a new one."
Party of Purple: "Too late, it already passed into law; we had to make some concessions though, so only the part about taxing people excessively was saved."
Me: "OMFG!"
And that is how our Congress works.
I am John Hurt.