Beyond manifestos: Exploring how political campaigns use online advertisements to communicate policy information and pledges

Dobber, Tom; Vreese, Claes de

doi:10.1177/20539517221095433

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 48 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Aside from its potential persuasive advantage, the widespread use of microtargeting could also undermine trust in democratic institutions and decrease political participation ( 9 ), given that many members of the public voice strong opposition to this practice ( 21 – 23 , 55 ). Some of these fears rest on the concern that microtargeting could allow politicians to covertly promise different and/or mutually exclusive policies to different segments of the population ( 56 ). Furthermore, data privacy remains a central priority to activists and voters alike.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying the potential persuasive returns to political microtargeting

Tappin

Wittenberg

Hewitt

et al. 2023

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Much concern has been raised about the power of political microtargeting to sway voters’ opinions, influence elections, and undermine democracy. Yet little research has directly estimated the persuasive advantage of microtargeting over alternative campaign strategies. Here, we do so using two studies focused on U.S. policy issue advertising. To implement a microtargeting strategy, we combined machine learning with message pretesting to determine which advertisements to show to which individuals to maximize persuasive impact. Using survey experiments, we then compared the performance of this microtargeting strategy against two other messaging strategies. Overall, we estimate that our microtargeting strategy outperformed these strategies by an average of 70% or more in a context where all of the messages aimed to influence the same policy attitude (Study 1). Notably, however, we found no evidence that targeting messages by more than one covariate yielded additional persuasive gains, and the performance advantage of microtargeting was primarily visible for one of the two policy issues under study. Moreover, when microtargeting was used instead to identify which policy attitudes to target with messaging (Study 2), its advantage was more limited. Taken together, these results suggest that the use of microtargeting—combining message pretesting with machine learning—can potentially increase campaigns’ persuasive influence and may not require the collection of vast amounts of personal data to uncover complex interactions between audience characteristics and political messaging. However, the extent to which this approach confers a persuasive advantage over alternative strategies likely depends heavily on context.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying the potential persuasive returns to political microtargeting

Tappin

Wittenberg

Hewitt

et al. 2023

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…More broadly, it is also important to recognize that the ethical concerns over microtargeting extend beyond its ability to influence public opinion. For example, this practice could allow politicians to covertly promise mutually exclusive policies to different segments of the population (48). Furthermore, data privacy remains a central concern, given that microtargeting often involves gathering and leveraging as much personal data as possible (8,9), This observation has implications for political campaigns seeking to most effectively persuade the public.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying the Potential Persuasive Returns to Political Microtargeting

Tappin¹,

Wittenberg

Hewitt

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Much concern has been raised about the unique power of political microtargeting to sway voters’ opinions, influence elections, and undermine democracy. Yet little empirical research has directly estimated the persuasive advantage of microtargeting over more conventional messaging strategies. Here, we do so using two large-scale studies focused on U.S. policy issue advertising (total n = 32,695 U.S. adults; 74 distinct persuasive messages). To simulate a microtargeting approach, we combine machine learning with message pre-testing to determine which messages to show to which individuals to maximize persuasive impact. Using randomized experiments, we then compare the performance of microtargeting against two alternative messaging strategies: (i) the naïve strategy, in which people are exposed to a random message from a set of relevant messages, not guided by pre-testing, and (ii) the single-best-message strategy, in which people are exposed to the message that was the most persuasive overall in pre-testing. We estimate that microtargeting outperforms these alternative strategies by an average of 70% or more in a typical political advertising context where all messages are attempting to influence the same policy attitude (Study 1). In a less typical context, where microtargeting is used to identify both which policy attitude to target and which message to show (Study 2), microtargeting outperforms the naïve strategy but is no better than the single-best-message strategy. Together, these results suggest that political microtargeting can confer a sizable persuasive advantage over more traditional messaging strategies and furnish new insights about the potential societal impacts of this increasingly common campaign practice.

show abstract

“…There is a growing literature of empirical research examining different aspects of the use of online political targeting in individual countries which is characterized by a geographical imbalance: most studies focus on specific regions, predominantly in the global north. The majority of studies examine US presidential and midterm campaigns (e.g., Ghosh et al, 2019; Kreiss et al, 2018; Fowler et al, 2021; Votta et al, 2023; Barrett, 2022 Beyond the US, studies have also been conducted in Australia (Kefford, 2021), Canada (Bennett and Gordon, 2021) or in the European context in the Netherlands (Dobber et al, 2017; Dobber andVreese, 2022), UK (Dommett and Power, 2019), Spain (Baviera et al, 2023), and Germany . Studies that examine the usage of microtargeting in countries in the global south, such as Brazil are much rarer in comparison (Silva et al, 2020).…”

Section: Global Prevalence and Strategies Of Political Microtargetingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Does(n't) Target You?

Votta,

Kruschinski,

Hove

et al. 2024

JQD

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Political campaigns are increasingly investing in targeted advertising on social media platforms to reach voters. Despite critical implications for citizens and elections, little is known about the targeting strategies deployed by political parties — especially in countries beyond the global north. This paper provides a comprehensive descriptive analysis of political microtargeting practices on Facebook and Instagram across 95 countries during 113 national elections. By analyzing the Meta Ad Targeting dataset, we explore targeting strategies of 54k political advertisers who ran 2.5 million ads between August 2020 and December 2022. The findings indicate that election campaigns worldwide utilize targeted advertising. Most commonly, spending is allocated towards a single targeting criterion, however, in wealthier countries and electoral systems with proportional representation, a greater amount of money is spent on microtargeting by combining multiple criteria. Furthermore, targeting strategies vary along ideological lines of political parties who seek out voters more typically aligned with each side of the political spectrum. Nonetheless, parties use microtargeting irrespective of political ideology. Our findings offer the first comparative analysis of political microtargeting on Meta platforms for countries across all continents. Methodologically, we introduce a semi-automatic method to identify worldwide political advertisers using multiple data sources. Our study deepens the understanding of how country and party contexts explain differences in targeting strategies, highlighting the need for more research beyond the global north. Finally, our results have important implications for policy makers, and other stakeholders who seek to develop regulations to address the challenges posed by political microtargeting techniques.

show abstract

Beyond manifestos: Exploring how political campaigns use online advertisements to communicate policy information and pledges

Cited by 8 publications

References 48 publications

Quantifying the potential persuasive returns to political microtargeting

Quantifying the potential persuasive returns to political microtargeting

Quantifying the Potential Persuasive Returns to Political Microtargeting

Who Does(n't) Target You?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About