The Political Economy of Facebook Advertising: Election Spending, Regulation and Targeting Online

Dommett, Katharine; Power, Sam

doi:10.1111/1467-923x.12687

Cited by 57 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…Recent surveys in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States (Ipsos MORI, 2020; Kozyreva et al, 2020) also provide evidence that people consider personalization and targeting in political campaigning unacceptable. The impact of microtargeting is often exacerbated by the lack of transparency in political campaigning on social media: It is nearly impossible to trace how much has been spent on microtargeting and what content has been shown (e.g., Dommett & Power, 2019).…”

Section: Challenges In Online Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizens Versus the Internet: Confronting Digital Challenges With Cognitive Tools

Kozyreva

Lewandowsky

Hertwig

2020

Psychol Sci Public Interest

249

118

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The Internet has evolved into a ubiquitous and indispensable digital environment in which people communicate, seek information, and make decisions. Despite offering various benefits, online environments are also replete with smart, highly adaptive choice architectures designed primarily to maximize commercial interests, capture and sustain users’ attention, monetize user data, and predict and influence future behavior. This online landscape holds multiple negative consequences for society, such as a decline in human autonomy, rising incivility in online conversation, the facilitation of political extremism, and the spread of disinformation. Benevolent choice architects working with regulators may curb the worst excesses of manipulative choice architectures, yet the strategic advantages, resources, and data remain with commercial players. One way to address some of this imbalance is with interventions that empower Internet users to gain some control over their digital environments, in part by boosting their information literacy and their cognitive resistance to manipulation. Our goal is to present a conceptual map of interventions that are based on insights from psychological science. We begin by systematically outlining how online and offline environments differ despite being increasingly inextricable. We then identify four major types of challenges that users encounter in online environments: persuasive and manipulative choice architectures, AI-assisted information architectures, false and misleading information, and distracting environments. Next, we turn to how psychological science can inform interventions to counteract these challenges of the digital world. After distinguishing among three types of behavioral and cognitive interventions—nudges, technocognition, and boosts—we focus on boosts, of which we identify two main groups: (a) those aimed at enhancing people’s agency in their digital environments (e.g., self-nudging, deliberate ignorance) and (b) those aimed at boosting competencies of reasoning and resilience to manipulation (e.g., simple decision aids, inoculation). These cognitive tools are designed to foster the civility of online discourse and protect reason and human autonomy against manipulative choice architectures, attention-grabbing techniques, and the spread of false information.

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Section: Challenges In Online Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizens Versus the Internet: Confronting Digital Challenges With Cognitive Tools

Kozyreva

Lewandowsky

Hertwig

2020

Psychol Sci Public Interest

249

118

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“…If MPs cannot easily distribute press releases via their political party or if press releases are less relevant than in our case, legislators might focus on social media platforms instead. Because politicians' online and offline communication differs (Fowler et al, 2020), we cannot rule out that our findings might differ in these contexts. We therefore encourage future research to study whether and how elite communication on the legislative agenda differs in other channels and across countries.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Disseminating legislative debates: How legislators communicate the parliamentary agenda

Huber¹,

Bodlos²,

Graf

et al. 2020

Party Politics

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While a rich literature addresses legislative agenda-setting in multiparty democracies, relatively little is known how members of parliament disseminate the legislative agenda beyond the parliamentary floor. Drawing on content analyses of 110 legislative debates and 5,847 press releases from Austrian MPs (2013–2017), we test whether legislators are more likely to send press releases on issues that are salient to their party ( party agenda-setting) and to other parties in the party system ( systemic salience). MPs should also communicate more on issues that fall within their area of expertise ( issue specialization) and when they have given a speech on that issue during the legislative debate ( intra-party delegation). While we find empirical support for all these expectations, communication of the legislative agenda largely rests on each parties’ issue specialists and their speakers in plenary debates. Importantly, there is no significant discrepancy overall between the actual parliamentary issue agenda and the agenda communicated by party MPs.

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“…agree that it is not acceptable for social media platforms to use their data to deliver customized messages from political campaigns (Smith, 2018b). The impact of microtargeting is often exacerbated by the lack of transparency in political campaigning on social media: It is nearly impossible to trace how much has been spent on microtargeting and what content has been shown (e.g., Dommett & Power, 2019).…”

Section: Consistent Delegation Of Choice and Shifting Autonomy From Umentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizens Versus the Internet: Confronting Digital Challenges With Cognitive Tools

Kozyreva¹,

Lewandowsky²,

Hertwig³

2019

Preprint

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The Internet has evolved into a ubiquitous and indispensable digital environment in which people communicate, seek information, and make decisions. Despite offering various benefits, online environments are also replete with smart, highly adaptive choice architectures designed primarily to maximize commercial interests, capture and sustain users’ attention, monetize user data, and predict and influence future behavior. This online landscape holds multiple negative consequences for society, such as a decline in human autonomy, rising incivility in online conversation, the facilitation of political extremism, and the spread of disinformation. Benevolent choice architects working with regulators may curb the worst excesses of manipulative choice architectures, yet the strategic advantages, resources, and data remain with commercial players. One way to address this imbalance is with interventions that empower Internet users to gain some control over their digital environments, in part by boosting their information literacy and their cognitive resistance to manipulation. Our goal is to present a conceptual map of interventions that are based on insights from psychological science. We begin by systematically outlining how online and offline environments differ despite being increasingly inextricable. We then identify four major types of challenges that users encounter in online environments: persuasive and manipulative choice architectures, AI-assisted information architectures, false and misleading information, and distractive environments. Next, we turn to how psychological science can inform interventions to counteract these challenges of the digital world. After distinguishing between three types of behavioral and cognitive interventions—nudges, technocognition, and boosts—we focus in on boosts, of which we identify two main groups: (1) those aimed at enhancing people’s agency in their digital environments (e.g., self-nudging, deliberate ignorance) and (2) those aimed at boosting competences of reasoning and resilience to manipulation (e.g., simple decision aids, inoculation). These cognitive tools are designed to foster the civility of online discourse and protect reason and human autonomy against manipulative choice architectures, attention-grabbing techniques, and the spread of false information.

show abstract

The Political Economy of Facebook Advertising: Election Spending, Regulation and Targeting Online

Cited by 57 publications

References 1 publication

Citizens Versus the Internet: Confronting Digital Challenges With Cognitive Tools

Citizens Versus the Internet: Confronting Digital Challenges With Cognitive Tools

Disseminating legislative debates: How legislators communicate the parliamentary agenda

Citizens Versus the Internet: Confronting Digital Challenges With Cognitive Tools

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