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Use of social media in election campaigns

(29 Posts)
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MawBroon Sun 09-Apr-17 11:08:05

I am wary of sites such as Buzzfeed, The Canary and others, not because of their political stance but the way they have crossed over into self styled news providers. Not saying this instance is necessarily "fake news" but sites such as this arouse my suspicions.
Wikipedia
The Canary (political blog)
The Canary is a left-wing political blog in the United Kingdom, which editor-in-chief Kerry-Anne Mendoza says is "here to disrupt the status quo of the UK and international journalism, by creating content that compels audiences to view the world differently".[1] While it focuses on UK political affairs, it also has a "Global" section, a satire section ("Off the Perch"), and "Science", "Environment", and "Health" sections.[2]

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whitewave Sun 09-Apr-17 11:07:34

Well there seems to enough overwhelming anacdotal evidence as well as those with the wealth to fund these projects for there to be more than an element of truth in this

There are a number of worrying aspects to it. The most important is that the law has not caught up with this sort of phenomenon.
It allows as you pointed out maize those with this power to target individuals, and so making it impossible for the information to be scrutinized for anything misleading or xenophobic or rascist etc.

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MaizieD Sun 09-Apr-17 11:06:28

Damn, posting in a rush and forgot to post link sad

www.thecanary.co/2017/04/08/media-refused-print-big-electoral-fraud-story-came-week/

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MaizieD Sun 09-Apr-17 11:01:22

I'm really not sure where to put this as it ties in with a number of current threads so I thought I'd give it one of its own.

This is a story from The Canary which highlights the use by the tories in the 2015 election campaign of targeted adverts on Facebook. We know that the Trump election team used these techniques and that Brexit campaigners probably did but are we aware that they have been used in General Elections?

The objection the Canary is primarily interested in is the corruption angle; that Facebook ads were targeted specifically at voters in marginal consituencies but the costs were attributed to the national campaign rather than the local campaigns in those constituencies.

The other issue is that with such specifically targeted advertising we don't know what people are being told. We don't even know who is getting the adverts. This is very, very worrying in my opinion. It offers no opportunities for debate and rebuttal of wrong claims but plenty of opportunity for misleading voters.

What do people think?

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