How Trump Won
AND WHAT IT
MEANS FOR 2020
JACK BARBER
THE 2016
MACKAY
REPORT
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
03
INTRODUCTION
04
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
05
1.THE STATE OF CAMPAIGNING
06
INTRODUCTION
06
POLLING: THE SIGNAL AND THE NOISE
07
SOCIAL MEDIA: THE NEW SIGNAL AND THE NOISE
08
MICHIGAN: PRIMARY CONCERNS
12
STRATEGY AND SOCIAL MEDIA
14
IMPLICATIONS FOR CAMPAIGNS
16
UNDERSTANDING VOTER ENGAGEMENT
16
CASE STUDY: CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA
17
CONCLUSION
18
2. POST-TRUTH POLITICS AND FACT CHECKING
INTRODUCTION
21
TRUTHFUL CAMPAIGNS?
22
THE NEW MEDIA LANDSCAPE
23
THE CLICKBAIT CAMPAIGN
24
THE ROLE OF THE PRESS
26
POLITICAL CONTEXT: ACT TODAY, NOT TOMORROW
26
“IDENTIFY, SPECIFICALLY, WHAT THEY BELIEVE TO BE INACCURATE”
28
PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS
30
CASE STUDY: FULL FACT
31
THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION
32
MEDIA MONITORING IN A POST-TRUTH AGE
33
CASE STUDY: QUID
34
CONCLUSION
36
2020 VISION: WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
2
20
38
RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE MACKAY REPORT
38
POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS
39
ELECTION INFRASTRUCTURE
40
ELECTORAL COMMISSION
41
CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT COMMITTEE
41
MEDIA ORGANISATIONS
42
TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES
44
OVERALL CONCLUSION
46
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank everyone at Hanover for
giving me a unique opportunity at the very start of
my career, and particularly to Charles Lewington
and Anastasia Tole for their advice and support
throughout the award. George Osborne, Lord
Gilbert and Daniel Finkelstein also played an
important role in making this opportunity possible,
and Dr Liam Fox was instrumental in ensuring that
my time in America was a success.
Thanks to the office of congressman Chris Collins,
the Daily Caller, David Fuscus and Xenophon
Strategies for affording me front-line exposure to
D.C. in the height of election season, and to the
numerous other Americans willing to share their
expertise with a confused British graduate.
Above all, three people made this award possible.
Claire Sherry had endless phone calls, email
exchanges and meetings to get the project off the
ground, and was an invaluable mentor throughout
my time at Hanover. John Falk was an impeccable
host and expert guide to Washington D.C., and
cannot be thanked enough. Finally, this award was
set up in honour of Gregor Mackay, whose life
was cut tragically short, but whose legacy remains
intact in the continued success of the company he
co-founded.
3
INTRODUCTION TO THE MACKAY REPORT
Hanover Communications set up the Mackay Award in 2016. The brief,
“to spend five weeks experiencing different aspects of a presidential
campaign, and to write a report on the latest innovations in political
campaigning,” was to give the recipient, a recent graduate with a keen
interest in current affairs, a baptism of fire in the world of politics,
communications and public affairs. I was informed that I was to be the
Mackay Scholar on 17 June 2016.
Evidently, the world has changed quite a lot since then. Britain
has voted to leave the European Union. Donald Trump is the
new disruptive President of the United States. France is bracing
itself for a showdown between the conservative and the far
right. Italy is facing constitutional turmoil. Germany is nervous
about a far-right insurgency. It has never been more important
to understand the latest developments in a fast-changing
political environment.
As part of the Mackay Award, I flew to America in September.
From day one stateside, I was on Capitol Hill, shadowing
Congressman Chris Collins, the first sitting congressman to
endorse Donald Trump and a key figure of the transitional team
watched the presidential debate in the bustling newsroom of
the Daily Caller, a contrarian news website. My final weeks were
spent in a range of meetings with politicians, journalists and
strategists, each keen to give their take on the unfolding chaos.
I knocked on doors for the Democrats and watched the final
debate in bizarre circumstances with a group called Republican
Women for Hillary - a fitting conclusion to the most controversial
election in living memory.
This report seeks to outline my conclusions from conversations
I had in America, and from research I have subsequently
conducted. This should be read as a field report on the latest
innovations in and around political campaigns from the
perspective of a British graduate.
4
The focus is loosely on the US election, albeit with British
examples thrown in for good measure. There are issues with
this: the two political systems are not identical, and campaign
environments are noticeably different. As one observer told
me, the extra money and time afforded to American candidates
compared with their British counterparts affects strategists’ aims
(and the resources available to fulfil them). However, there are
broad similarities: both are stable Anglophone democracies with
advanced but low-growth economies, rising social inequality and
surprise ballot results in 2016.
The report covers a range of areas, including news and social
media and the use of data in campaigns. It seeks to point out
recent developments, highlight interesting case studies of
new approaches, and offer some conclusions about where
campaigning is going. My key arguments and findings can be
found in the executive summary below. Events of the last six
months have produced a very different report from the one I
expected to write. But for this reason, I think that my report
could be of value for anyone trying to make sense of what just
happened and where politics and communications might go
from here. I offer some suggestions and proposals about areas
of growth and innovation and political campaigning, and hope
that this report is considered to be a positive and optimistic
contribution to a deeply unsettling and uncertain period of
political turmoil.
How Trump Won and
What It Means For 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
THE STATE OF CAMPAIGNING
SOCIAL MEDIA INDICATED A TRUMP VICTORY
Whilst it is not quite time to count followers to predict ballots,
there is good cause to suggest that the smart money might be on
more integrated social polling in the future. As with all consumerfacing industries, there is simply too much information available
to ignore.
FACEBOOK AS THE UNRIVALLED SOCIAL PLATFORM
Facebook’s users are older than those on Snapchat and
Instagram, and are more receptive to adverts than those on
YouTube and Google. Its sheer size means that it is by far
the easiest way to reach target groups. For impactful digital
campaigning, Facebook is a virtual one-stop shop.
ROI DRIVING DIGITAL STRATEGY
Advertising and engagement must be measurable, scalable and
should feed into improving the next interaction. Digital strategy
should be ingrained within the central nervous system of a
campaign, involved in every interaction and engagement.
POST-TRUTH POLITICS AND
FACT CHECKING:
NEW MEDIA LANDSCAPE
A handful of major technology companies now dominate the
media landscape to an unprecedented extent. The way that
people receive news has changed: it is now recommended to
them by an algorithm, or shared by friends. This altered media
environment has new rules of engagement. The fake news
scandal was symptomatic of a fragmented media market where
authority and accuracy is hard to identify.
FACT CHECKING TECHNOLOGY
There is space for news companies to integrate new but available
technologies to improve their scrutiny of political figures and
their authority as quality publications. Collaborations between
technology firms and non-profits demonstrate the potential for
civic collaboration in the new media landscape.
ELECTORAL AUTHORITIES: AUDITORS OR ADJUDICATORS?
Firms like Facebook, Twitter and Google are receptive to civic
partnerships, having been involved with voter registration drives
and providing polling information in the past. Fact checking could
become a vital part of regulating future political campaigns.
DIGITAL ECONOMY, DIGITAL GOVERNMENT?
The British Government has demonstrated that it is willing to
intervene both in the digital economy and in media affairs in
recent years. Before state action, there is the opportunity for
leading figures in the digital ecosystem (Facebook, Microsoft,
Google etc) and media companies to better verify and
authenticate claims, thus better holding public figures and
businesses accountable.
5
The State
of Campaigning
KEY POINTS:
1
SOCIAL MEDIA INDICATED A
TRUMP VICTORY
Social media analysts have been somewhat shunned by pollsters
in the past. Fake accounts, bots and closed source data have all
prevented social media from rendering industrial political polling
obsolete. Yet the polls were askew in 2016, and some suggest
that social media gave a better reflection of public sentiment.
Whilst it is not quite time to count followers to predict ballots,
there is good cause to suggest that the smart money might be on
more integrated social polling in the future. As with all consumerfacing industries, there is simply too much information available
to ignore.
2
FACEBOOK AS THE UNRIVALLED
SOCIAL PLATFORM
Facebook is a long way from its origin as a college yearbook
site. Its users are older than those on Snapchat and Instagram,
and are more receptive to adverts than those on Youtube and
Google. Its sheer size – an unprecedented user base including
the majority of UK and US adults as monthly users, a large
percentage of which check in daily – means that it is by far the
easiest way to reach target groups in a social and interactive way.
For impactful digital campaigning, Facebook is currently a virtual
one-stop shop.
3
ROI DRIVING
DIGITAL STRATEGY
Campaign success is not measured by simple metrics such
as likes and shares. Advertising and engagement must be
measurable, scalable and should feed into improving the next
interaction. This does not involve investing in the latest fad or
building a big presence on Millenials’ favourite new site to be
down with the kids. Instead, digital strategies are increasingly
data-driven and perpetually improving understanding of the
target audience. To achieve such results, shared data across
different parts of the overall campaign is imperative. Digital
strategy should not be an add-on, but part of the central nervous
system of a campaign, central to every aspect and engagement.
4
PERSONALISED AND MEANINGFUL
INTERACTIONS
Sophisticated digital strategy at its best should be mutually
beneficial for both voter and campaign. Providing personalised
and tailored suggestions and advice in return for personal details
and information simultaneously builds stronger connections
between potential voters, supporters and campaigns, but also
enhances campaign’s understanding of the electorate beyond
their core support base.
INTRODUCTION
Winning an election is about building a campaign that effectively cuts out irrelevant noise and amplifying signals that indicate vital
battlegrounds and voter groups. Catch-all billboard advertising has not been where elections are won and lost for some time. Efficiency
is key: rather than building a general presence, using hard-earned resources only where they can have measurable impact and clear
return on investment (ROI) is no longer a luxury but a prerequisite of any communications plan.
Campaigns employ increasingly sophisticated analytics that provide granular ways of understanding and evaluating the electorate,
with growing resources to better target those who matter. This section seeks to examine key developments in data strategy and digital
targeting that are increasingly driving political campaigns.
6
POLLING: THE SIGNAL AND THE NOISE
First, it is worth thinking about knowing areas and demographic groups
where the election is won or lost.
Political risk advisers have always said polls should come with
a warning. However, statistician Nate Silver built his reputation
correctly predicting outcomes in 49 of the 50 states in the 2008
U.S. Presidential Election, and all 50 states plus the District of
Columbia in 2012. His FiveThirtyEight blog gave Clinton a 55%
chance of taking the White House, and whilst accurately calling
Ohio and Iowa for Trump, was way off with Pennsylvania and
Michigan, arguably the most important surprise of the election.
Much has been made of the death of public polling (based on the
‘triple failure’ of most polls to correctly predict the 2015 British
election, the EU referendum and the U.S. 2016 election), despite
pollsters’ defence that most results lay within a factored margin
of error. For example, FiveThirtyEight gave Trump a 45% chance
of victory on the eve of the vote. Though a surprise victor, he was
hardly down-and-out.
Average samples tend to draw on around 1,000 respondents,
and few include more than 3,000. Larger polls require substantial
expenditure, and a +/-5% margin of error that comes with the
smaller polls has been satisfactory in the most part until now.
However, as campaigning strategy becomes more targeted, so
polling will inevitably become more sophisticated.
Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns were trailblazers for intensive
experimentation with large samples in key voter segments,
via phone calls, surveys and focus groups. David Axelrod’s
autobiography, Believer, gives an insight into the detail of
the results his campaign reaped from the resource-intensive
approach that lifted the bar in terms of targeted campaigning
that delivered a better ROI.
This time round, expert pollster Kellyanne Conway headed
Trump’s campaign. Her success did not shock everyone in DC.
A former speechwriter at the White House told me that she had
accurately predicted trends amongst the electorate from her
focus groups some 18 months to two years before other analysts.
Her capacity to anticipate the rise of both the Tea Party
movement and the well-documented rise in disaffected
rustbelt Americans as a key political group in 2006 preceded
Trump, Obama, and even the Great Recession (is that what
they call it?). The importance of her polling expertise and
understanding of middle America should not be underestimated
in November’s result.
In 2016, however, Trump’s polling operations were more
methodical than many gave him credit for. Although he may
have been a late starter in coordinating a data-driven campaign,
he piggybacked on long-term planning by the RNC, made in the
aftermath of 2012’s defeat, as well as seeking external assistance.
Trump paid millions for services from data firm Cambridge
Analytica, whose Validity product seeks to narrow polling margins
of error by increasing sample sizes to 10,000. However, both sides
had the capacity for advanced internal polling, and from a range
of conversations in peak election season, few beyond the upper
echelons of the Republican Party thought the balance of the
campaign infrastructure favoured Trump. On the contrary, Daniel
Kreiss, a communications professor, wrote Prototype Politics, in
which he convincingly argues that the Democrats had a longterm competitive advantage in technological resources, digital
awareness and data collection techniques that starkly contrasted
with the Republican equivalent. As one young and liberal software
engineer close to the Clinton campaign said, the main concern
was not of being beaten, but of complacency.
RealClearPolitics projected that the battle for the White House
depended on 171 electoral college votes, out of 538 (Clinton was
virtually guaranteed 203, Trump 164). Commentators and pollsters
alike had been speaking about the rustbelt (Michigan, Iowa,
Pennsylvania), North Carolina, and the usual suspects (Ohio,
Iowa, Florida) as key swing states for months. Meanwhile, books
such as Hillbilly Elegy were paraded around the Washington
commentariat in the summer as representations of the people
that would decide the election. Was it such a shock when Trump’s
path to the White House opened up?
7
SOCIAL MEDIA:
THE NEW SIGNAL AND THE NOISE?
The two ‘populist’ votes of 2016, Brexit and Trump’s election, have led to suggestions that social
media has become a better indicator of public sentiment than expert independent polling. Andre
Van Loon, Research and Insight Director at We Are Social, has written about both the EU referendum
and US election. He has argued that social media engagement has provided a fairly accurate bellweather of public sentiment.
In the month before the Leave vote, Van Loon tentatively noted higher levels of engagement across
social platforms for Vote Leave, despite the side having fewer followers. He also analysed the
presidential candidates’ respective social media efforts in Campaign. “In the run-up to Election Day
Trump led Clinton on every top-line social media metric: quantity of posting, social interactions,
positive interactions and sharing.” Van Loon also found that Trump clocked up 16.3m likes and loves
of his content, compared with just 13.1m for Clinton. There were 2.8m shares
of his content, compared with 2.1m for Clinton’s. We Are Social were not
alone: marketing analytics and data firm 4C Insights were featured in the Wall
Street Journal, having also correctly forecast Brexit. Comparing the two main
candidates, 4C Insights charted social media audience and levels positive
sentiment. Despite suggestions that automated ‘bots’ boosted Trump’s
digital figures,
Strikingly, the point at which many DC experts felt the campaign to be over –
on 7 October, with footage documenting Trump’s explicit sexual comments
on set with Access Hollywood – was actually the moment where Trump saw
his social media base grow more than at any other point until election day.
The scandal was hardly part of Trump’s strategy to win, but underlines the
way in which the candidate rolled with the punches from authoritative outlets
and somehow emerged relatively unscathed, his base consolidated and his
audience share greater than ever.
“In the run-up to
Election Day Trump
led Clinton on every
top-line social media
metric: quantity
of posting, social
interactions, positive
interactions and
sharing.”
Social media analysis is difficult to integrate into conventional polling. The
variety of media, slang, local slang and humour (along with creative spelling
variations) makes systematic monitoring difficult, particularly beyond official
pages and public groups. Twitter and Instagram might have open-source
data, but the most important network, Facebook, remains reluctant to
provide public and usable information for social monitoring, as reported in the Columbia Journalism
Review (see Michigan: Primary Concerns below for an exception by FiveThirtyEight). However, this
variety could enhance both journalism and campaign. Interactions with campaign statements by
policy area, tone or theme provide instant aggregated feedback. Gaging likeability is merely the tip of
the iceberg.
8
Social activity and engagement
(Checked on 8 Nov 2016, last 7 days)
Total social
activity (number
of posts/updates)
204
Positive
engagement
(likes or loves)
Total social
engagement
23.3m
Total social
activity (number
of posts/updates)
266
Total shares
16.3m
Total social
engagement
16.9m
2.77m
Positive
engagement
(likes or loves)
13.1m
Total shares
2.10m
Social media audience size
(Checked on 8 Nov 2016)
Instagram
2.97m
Facebook
12.38m
Facebook
8.33m
Total
Twitter
13.1m
28.4m
Youtube
99.8k
Twitter
Instagram
3.06m
10.3m
Total
Youtube
21.8m
135.1k
9
THE SOCIAL CAMPAIGN
Positive sentiment and engagement on social
media during the campaign
Figure 1
CLINTON SENTIMENT
80%
TRUMP SENTIMENT
70%
60%
50%
40%
JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEP
OCT
NOV
DEC
OCT
NOV
DEC
2.0M
TOTAL TRUMP ENGAGEMENTS
OCT 1 – NOV 7
CLINTON TRUMP ENGAGEMENTS
OCT 1 – NOV 7
1.6M
1.2M
0.8M
0.4M
0
JAN
FEB
MAR
Voting begins in
IA, NH, NV, SC
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
Clinton clinches
Dem nomination
Trump skips
Rep debate
SEP
First presidential
debate
National conventions
VP candidates chosen
VP, 2nd & 3rd
presidential debates
CLINTON
KAINE
TRUMP
PENCE
Trump wins NY Primary
Cruz drops from race
Trump clinches
Rep nomination
VP candidates
begin campaigning
Figure 1: Positive sentiment and engagement on social media during the campaign.
Source: h!ps://techcrunch.com/2016/11/10/social-media-did-a-be!er-job-atpredicting-trumps-win-than-the-polls/ ©4C Insights. INC | 4C Insights.com
10
SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGMENT:
Include mentions, retweets, comments, and
post likes from Clinton, Trump, Pence and
Kaine Facebook pages and Twitter handles, as
well as related keywords and hashtags from
January 1, 2016 through November 7, 2016.
POSITIVE SENTIMENT:
Percent of social media engagements which
are positive and not negative.
11
MICHIGAN:
PRIMARY CONCERNS
Facebook likes are not indicative of
predicted voting intention, but give
some signal of the level of penetration a
candidate has made in a given area. The
below figures compare Facebook likes
for presidential candidates as of April
2016, in the heat of primary season. In a
rare public application of Facebook data,
geographically delineated, FiveThirtyEight
demonstrated early signals of social
media engagement amongst the
presidential candidates in primary season,
in April 2016. Looking at Michigan, the key
toss-up that eventually delivered Trump
the White House, alarm bells should have
been ringing for the Clinton campaign.
Michigan last voted for a Republican
presidential candidate in 1988. In 2012,
Obama triumphed over Romney by a
comfortable 54%-45% margin. Clinton
continuously polling at around 55% to
Bernie’s 42% in consecutive surveys, the
official results saw Bernie Sanders win the
Democratic primary, winning 49.68% of the
vote to Clinton’s 48.26%. In the Republican
primary, Trump won 36.55% of
the vote, with Ted Cruz and John Kasich
trailing with 24.68% and 24.26% of the vote
respectively.
12
Clinton was nowhere on Facebook in
Michigan’s primary: this might not suggest
a campaigning failure, but the social
media platform is widely considered the
most important platform for engaging
voters beyond personal interaction. Her
lack of traction with voters hinted at
the lack of enthusiasm that plagued her
campaign. Simplistically, if people fail
to like on Facebook whilst liking your
competitors, why should the ballot box be
any different?
As an aside, the project demonstrates
the political and social intelligence
that Facebook has due to its vast
data collection and near-ubiquitous
user base: a critical resource that
governments would do well to recognise:
perhaps never have the likes, dislikes,
language and views of mankind been so
comprehensively mapped and available
for evaluation.
Figure 2
Source: h!ps://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/
facebook-primary/
Figure 3
Source: h!ps://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/
facebook-primary/
Figure 2: The Facebook Primary. Share of Facebook likes by
presidential candidate, measured in April 2016, with each county
coloured depending on lead candidate; Figure 3: Michigan, by
state share and +/-% vs. US; Figure 4: Trump vs. Clinton, by
number of Facebook likes, April 2016. Source: FiveThirtyEight.
Figure 4
Source: h!ps://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/
facebook-primary/
13
STRATEGY AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media platforms were not created equal, and
engagement and audience figures do not provide any
silver bullet to win campaigns, although as seen above
analytics can provide an interesting alternative insight
to conventional polls. However, these new platforms do
open up new questions about how campaigns engage with
voters.
Digital strategists are taking an increasingly grown-up
approach to political campaigning, and now sit at the
top table with campaign managers and the candidates
themselves. Digital strategy should not be viewed as
an optional add-on, the cherry on the cake to add some
glitter to dry manifesto pledges. Instead, there is vast
potential to gain great competitive advantage by building
a sophisticated digital strategy into the central nervous
system of campaign activity. A digital campaign is not
about covering all bases, investing heavily in the latest
platform. Instead campaigns should be seeking to use
minimal resources to maximum effect whilst improving the
overall efficiency of broader operations.
As TargetedVictory, a media buying company spun out of
previous Republican campaigns, described, “by optimizing
a television ad buy, a political campaign could find 10 to
20 percent budget savings, which could power their voter
turnout programmes, their fundraising, and everything in
between.” That means focusing on the digital channels
where key audiences exist, and ignoring others.
EdmondsElder, the digital consultancy set up by the team
behind the Conservatives’ 2015 General Election win,
explained: “if you want to spend all day making Vines or
managing a pretty Instagram account, great. But if you’re
trying to reach a 40-year-old mum of two in Derby North
who doesn’t use either platform, you’re wasting your time.”
Figure 5: Example of targeted Facebook advertising, Conservative Party, 2015.
Source: h!ps://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/how-the-tories-spent-ps12million-on-facebook-adverts-in-run?utm_term=.xnzOewyqJv#.iuBMq1nJXa
14
Facebook remains digital strategists’ bread and butter. A Pew
report published in November 2016 confirmed the staggering
dominance the network has amongst American adults. In Britain,
Facebook’s use as a campaigning tool has added imperative.
British parties are not allowed to buy TV and radio advertising by
law but there are no such restrictions on online advertising, as
Buzzfeed reported. The site has almost 1.2bn active daily users
worldwide, and 1.8bn active monthly users. Craig Elder told
Buzzfeed news that: “We tested everything: display advertising,
Google AdWords, Facebook. We found unequivocally that
Facebook was the easiest way to reach the people we wanted
to reach in the places we wanted to reach them.” Tom Edmonds
added: “Last election we spent 3-4 million on billboards. This time,
it was a fraction of that and we put the money in digital.”
The 2015 General Election was a tale of two parties in terms of
digital strategy. The Conservatives spent £1.2m on Facebook
adverts, compared with Labour’s £130,000. The Tories meanwhile
spent £312,000 on Google advertising: both routes to targeting
marginal constituencies with ads tailored to demographic, voter
group and geographical location. Labour, on the other hand,
reportedly invested heavily in Twitter – a costly misjudgement.
Ian Patrick Hines, of Hines Digital, the firm behind impressive
independent candidate Evan McMullin, and with experience on
Britain Stronger in Europe and Theresa May’s short campaign to
become Prime Minister, said that whilst data and user figures can
drive strategy, there ultimately has to be a level of human insight
that makes interactions personable, meaningful and lasting. In
the spur of the moment, decisions have to be made about what
works and what doesn’t.
Contrary to accusations of a chaotic ground campaign, the
Trump campaign was apparently meticulous in achieving
this: according to a Forbes report, Jared Kushner played an
instrumental role in creating a fiercely competitive creative
environment where adverts were trialled against each other for
minutes, measuring engagement and interaction, and quickly
trashed or scaled up depending on the results. A successful
campaign, regardless of the resources available, should still not
throw money at everything digital and hope it sticks. In the rapidly
changing and flexible world of digital campaigning, maximum ROI
should not only be a goal to aim for, but should guide strategy
going forwards.
Facebook remains the most popular social
media platform
% OF ONLINE ADULTS WHO USE...
Figure 6: % of American adult
100
internet users on social networks.
Source: Pew Research Centre.
Facebook 79%
PERCENTAGE
80
Source: Buzzfeed News.
Note : 86% of Americans are
currently internet users
60
Source: Survey conducted March
7th April, 2016. ‘Social Media Update
Instagram 32%
Pinterest 31%
LinkedIn 29%
Twi!er 24%
40
20
2016’ – PEW Research Centre
0
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
15
IMPLICATIONS FOR CAMPAIGNING
Even with clear access to target audiences, it is not a given
that campaigns will find receptive voters.
According to an October 2016 Pew report on the political
environment on social media, only 20% like seeing lots of political
posts and discussions, whilst 37% described themselves as
“worn out” by how many political posts and discussions they see.
One way to circumnavigate this political fatigue amongst ordinary
voters is to give them something tailored in return for further
information about voters that can feed back into the campaign’s
datasets.
Campaigns require information about voters, and voters
want to know how an elected official will affect their lives. The
Conservatives in 2015 were remarkably effective at creating
mutually beneficial arrangements. As Tom Edmonds and Craig
Elder described in an op-ed for the Telegraph, “we wanted to
highlight the fact we’d cut income tax for 26 million people. So we
build an interactive calculator where you entered your salary and
could see exactly how much you were saving. In return for that
bit of personalised information, people were happy to leave their
email addresses so we could start an ongoing conversation
on the issues they were most interested in – and speak to people
beyond our core supporters.” These actions contributed to the
statistic that the Conservatives were in conversation with 17m
people a week by the end of the campaign.
In a similar move the Remain campaign employed a personal
calculator with personalised feedback that showed Britons what
their family purse would look like should Britain leave the European
Union. Over 107,000 people used the calculator before polling
day, whilst the email addresses gained from each interaction
contributed to 20 million individual emails being sent to supporters
with an impressive open rate of 27.8%. The failure of the campaign
puts the importance of digital strategy into context, although
could ultimately be explained by a failure of messaging as much
as anything. As Jan-Werner Müller wrote for the London Review of
Books, “the Treasury-approved ‘fact’ that British families were going
to be £4,000 a year worse off outside the EU took on a different
meaning: who wouldn’t pay £4,000 for freedom and democracy?”
UNDERSTANDING VOTER PRIORITIES
Speaking to senior figures within the data team at the Republican
National Committee (RNC), it was striking their confidence about
their use of data and their capacity to reach target voters. A
critical aspect of their campaign strategy was restructuring how
the party stored its data, so it could be shared between states as
well as up and down the ticket. However, equally important was
the shift in approach to interacting with voters. A key take-away
from meeting the team was their emphasis on understanding
fewer people but in much greater detail.
16
CASE STUDY:
CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA
The data muscle behind Make America Great Again “There are no longer
any experts except Cambridge Analytica. They were Trump’s digital team
who figured out how to win.” - FRANK LUNTZ, POLITICAL POLLSTER.
Trump was ridiculed for being late to the party with his data strategy,
although as a leading Republic national director pointed out, his
party had been conducting substantial groundwork, identifying key
voter groups, since before the 2014 midterm elections.“Trump was
the ideal candidate for us – he could just pick up our grassroots
intel and run with it from day one”, as one informed me. However,
Trump’s campaign was not totally shooting from the hip. It invested
heavily in the controversial data firm, Cambridge Analytica. The low
profile London-based firm attracted media attention because of the
substantial payments Trump made from summer 2016. In September
2016, Trump spent $5m alone on the company’s services, which
include data acquisition, predictive analytics, audience insight and
digital marketing.
Cambridge Analytica uses big data to provide insights to clients,
such as which target audiences are most relevant and for what
reasons. Provided via a series of proprietary products, these insights
serve to drive engagements: digital outreach, television or media
buys, or other. As an aside, Cambridge Analytica also played a role in
Vote Leave’s campaign to leave the European Union.
NBC reported that Cambridge Analytica holds data on 230 million
adults across the U.S. — and around 4,000 “data points” on each
of them. Starting with the conventional building blocks for voteridentity, like age, name and gender, Cambridge Analytica also uses
transaction information from things like magazine purchases, gym
memberships and television habits. It seeks to understand which
way an individual might lean politically.
Cambridge Analytica span out of the British behavioural science firm
SCL Group, a company that has previously worked with NATO on
psychological operations. Psychological attributes are one
aspect of CA’s data modelling at the forefront of campaigning
strategy. This information helps campaigns to understand how
people view the world, and the most effective way that campaigns
can engage with individual voters. Cambridge Analytica are
reportedly in talks to secure two new contracts: one to improve
the Trump White House’s policy messaging, either within the
administration or via an external advocacy group, and the other
to help the Trump organisation to expand its sales. Steve Bannon,
Trump’s senior counsellor, sits on the board at the company.
Aside from persistent concerns about overlap between Trump’s
business interests and his White House operations, these reports
hint at the potential for the influence of data insights beyond political
campaigns and into the every-day communications of governments.
Meanwhile, the firm’s application of big data goes far beyond social
media: its targeted and intensely results-oriented approach means
that data and digital strategy are becoming intertwined in building
more intelligent campaigns. Voters might not yet be aware quite how
intimately political strategists understand their likes, spending habits
and concerns. But it is already driving how campaigns target and
engage with key parts of the electorate.
Cambridge
Analytica
uses big data
to provide
insights to
clients
17
CONCLUSION
Campaigns are becoming increasingly efficient, drawing on vast data sets to better engage with
voters and target those most important to winning campaigns. All signs suggest that these trends
will only increase in the future, as increasingly computer-literate generations with larger digital
footprints give away more personal information that allows campaigns to better structure adverts,
frame messages and build personal rapport. The information that is available is staggering. The
proliferation of cat videos online is one thing. But the volume of data points on intimate aspects of
individuals’ lives means that there is more potential than ever before to reach voters on a deeply
personal level. The opportunities and range of possibilities in this regard have barely been explored.
A key lesson from the 2015 UK General Election, the 2016 EU referendum and the 2016 US Election is
that digital strategy has grown up. This point is as important for the private sector as for politicians.
Facebook stands head and shoulders above all others in terms of turning personal information
into profit, through advertising revenue and precision targeting. Everything from logistics to
communications to commerce is becoming more efficient and integrated as people spend more
of their time online, providing better indications of their preferences and handing over more
information about their behaviour. As Yoval Noah Harari indicated in his bestselling book, Homo
Deus, this drive for efficiency could result in profound shifts with regards to free will and choice:
these changes hint at the potential for machines to know us better than we do. This philosophical
quandary will be a major question for our century.
In practical terms, these developments mean that no longer is it acceptable to simply have a
presence across the social media platforms in the hope that some form of engagement with key
stakeholders may be stumbled upon. An aggressive focus on investing substantially only in scalable
and targeted projects that provide demonstrably positive ROI has made campaigns leaner, meaner
and better at reaching those who matter. In short, there is no use developing intricate Periscope
broadcasts if no one is watching and engaging with them.
The focus on ROI has also led to better voter interactions. Campaigning examples such as the
personal income calculator reflect the increasingly intelligent, personable way in which the
best political vote-winners are building a rapport with voters rather than focusing on simplistic
metrics such as likes. Giving voters and supporters a stake in the campaign amplifies the impact
of every engagement, particularly in forums such as Facebook where people’s friends often share
geographical and socio-economic backgrounds. Meanwhile, these positive interactions ensure that
campaigns should be constantly updating and improving its data collection, giving them up-to-date
and evolving understanding of how voters see and interact with their world. The most successful
campaigns will adapt their messaging and policy priorities accordingly.
18
“This drive for
efficiency could result
in profound shi#s with
regards to free will and
choice: these changes
hint at the potential
for machines to know
us be$er than we do.
This philosophical
quandary will be a
major question for our
century.”
19
Post-truth Politics &
Fact Checking
“Recent controversy surrounding Google’s advertising checks underlines
the point that we have sleep-walked into a new environment without
adequately updating legal, regulatory and ethical standards. Going
forward, companies and politicians will be le# with no option but to wise
up on technological challenges – and fast.”
KEY POINTS:
1
NEW MEDIA LANDSCAPE
A handful of major technology companies now dominate the
media landscape to an unprecedented extent. This does not
render news media providers (think Buzzfeed, the Guardian, or the
Daily Caller) irrelevant: far from it, online traffic continues to grow.
However, the way that people receive news has changed: it is
now recommended to them by an algorithm, or shared by one of
their contemporaries. The well-documented echo chamber effect
is one problem with this new media environment. The fake news
scandal was symptomatic of a fragmented media landscape in
which authority or accuracy is hard to identify.
2
FACT CHECKING TECHNOLOGY
One way of building trust in both news reporting and the political
process is through independent and verified fact checking. There
is space for news companies to integrate new but available
technologies to improve their scrutiny of political figures and their
authority as quality publications. Bloomberg led the way in the
2016 US election, but collaborations between technology firms
and non-profits demonstrate the potential for civic collaboration
in the new media landscape.
20
3
ELECTORAL AUTHORITIES:
AUDITORS OR ADJUDICATORS?
Holding political figures accountable is not a role confined to
the media. A clear way that Government could improve the
transparency of political debate and elections is by partnering
with leading technology firms to provide a better voter
experience. Firms like Facebook, Twitter and Google are receptive
to civic partnerships, having been involved with voter registration
drives and providing polling information in the past. Fact checking
could become a vital part of regulating future campaigns.
4
DIGITAL ECONOMY, DIGITAL
GOVERNMENT?
The British Government has demonstrated that it is willing to
intervene both in the digital economy and in media affairs in
recent years. Before state action, there is an opportunity for
leading figures in the digital ecosystem (Facebook, Microsoft,
Google etc) and media companies to better verify and
authenticate claims, thus better holding public figures and
businesses accountable.
INTRODUCTION
“Post-truth” was the Oxford English Dictionary’s international word of the
year, a symbolic accolade that a$empted to capture the zeitgeist.
Factually accurate political discourse is important. Effective
policymaking demands it: Nikita Khrushchev’s agricultural policies
in the 1950s Soviet Union painfully demonstrated this point. Liberal
democracies rely on entrusting the population to make a political
choice based on the information provided to them: actively
misleading voters for political expedience undermines this trust.
The Economist still writes on each contents page,“first published
in September 1843 to take part in ‘a severe contest between
intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid
ignorance obstructing our progress.’” This historic mantra reminds
today’s politicos that absence of truth in news and politics is not a
new problem. Plato presented the ‘noble lie’ in The Republic.“Freddie
Starr Ate My Hamster” also springs to mind.
Untangling the various strands of political disillusionment, social
inequality and shifting media landscape that have led to the dawning
of the“post-truth” age is a daunting prospect. However, it is possible
to reflect on the shift in how campaign claims are held accountable:
how news media and the public hold public figures to account. In
turn, this line of inquiry raises deeper questions about the media
environment in which public political discourse is conducted.
Profound issues about digital media came to the fore in 2016,
challenging the basis of reasoned political debate.
TRUTHFUL CAMPAIGNS?
A key theme of Brexit, the U.S. election and the future political
forecast relates to the source and substance of any given
political claim. Politicians and journalists have found themselves
imitating philosophy undergraduates, questioning ‘what is a fact’,
whilst both campaign rhetoric and media coverage have been
condemned as misleading.
First, there are parallels regarding campaign rhetoric in that
there was a scant lack of consensus about the basic facts behind
arguments over issues.
The Vote Leave guarantee – canny or conniving, depending
on who you speak to - that £350m per week would find its
way from the EU budget to the NHS in a post-Brexit Britain
incensed Remain campaigners. Stateside, Pulitzer prizewinning
fact-checker PolitiFact evaluated Trump and Clinton’s central
campaign websites for accuracy. Clinton’s was found to be
‘true’ or ‘mostly true’ in 51% of claims, ‘half true’ in 24% of
instances, and ‘false’ or ‘mostly false’ 24% of the time. Trump’s, by
in 15% of instances, and ‘false’ or ‘mostly false’ 53% of the time.
The remaining percentage points are reserved for PolitiFact’s
irreverent ‘pants on fire’, the worst possible rating. 2% of Clinton’s
claims and 17% of Trump’s received this dubious accolade.
Trump, with his undeniable instinct for self-publicity, was
particularly adept at generating hours of free media coverage
by welcoming headlines with throwaway remarks and locking
horns even with uninvited critics to ensure that he had the cheap
oxygen of wall-to-wall press coverage.
His engagement with news media was mutually expedient but
hostile and destructive in the long term. He attacked the “failing”
New York Times, who in turn with the Washington Post carried
out concerted investigative attacks on the tax returns and sexual
misconduct of a man they described as “uniquely unqualified to
be president”. As the CEO of CBS said, Trump might be bad for
America but he was damn good for ratings.
comparison, was ‘true’ or ‘mostly true’ in 15% of claims, ‘half true’
21
THE NEW MEDIA LANDSCAPE
Public media consumption has transformed over the past decade. Where
once television networks and newspapers held a near-monopoly over election
coverage, today ordinary people of all ages are more likely to pick up their
news from Facebook than they are from a Washington Post editorial.
100
100
80
80
PERCENTAGE
PERCENTAGE
(SEE FIG. 1 AND FIG. 2 FOR COMPARISON OF U.K. AND U.S. SOURCE OF NEWS)
60
40
60
40
20
20
0
0
2013
2014
2015
2016
Figure 7: UK sources of news, 2013-2016, as % of adult UK
population. Source: Reuters Institute for the Study of
Journalism, Digital News Report 2016.
TV
ONLINE
2013
PRINT
2015
2016
Figure 8: US sources of news, 2013-2016, as % of adult US
population. Source: Reuters Institute for the Study of
Journalism, Digital News Report 2016.
TV
ONLINE
SOCIAL
PRINT
(INCL. SOCIAL)
SOCIAL
2014
(INCL. SOCIAL)
UK & US sources of news, 2013-2016
22
Television remains immensely important
(by Ofcom’s reckoning, it remains the most
widely used source of news in the UK). In the
US, some informed media observers pointed
to the cable channels as facilitating Trump’s
rise. A senior and respected member of the
White House press corps described Trump as
‘crack cocaine’ to television, and estimated
that the free, comprehensive coverage of his
debate provided by the networks ran to several
billions of dollars, a figure supported by the
New York Times. Meanwhile, CBS chairman Les
Moonves famously said in February 2016 that
Trump might not be good for America, but he
was “damn good for ratings.” Going forward, a
partner at Bully Pulpit Interactive, the agency
of record for Hilary Clinton’s campaign, said
that micro-targeted television advertising
would potentially be the single most important
area of growth for the 2020 cycle. Cambridge
Analytica, Trump’s data muscle, are also honing
TV targeting technology.
While the small screen might well have been
especially influential in propelling a former
reality television star to the White House, the
media environment is undoubtedly changing.
Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the
Study of Journalism produces an annual report
into digital news. It described the U.S. market
as being underpinned by “an ecosystem where
Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon control
the advertising and technological environment”
– in other words, regardless of the array of
channels and sources available, a handful of
providers are becoming dominant shapers of
the overall media landscape. Viewing habits
are also radically different: gone are the days
when families fought over the remote for
choice over the single screen in the corner
of the living room.
The digital era has removed barriers to entry for
aspiring journalists, and for spawned countless
sites catering for every media need. Sites like
Buzzfeed, Reddit and Twitter have changed
existing media practices beyond recognition,
and the dividing line between platforms and
mediums are increasingly blurred. Since 2012,
developments such as the Accelerated Mobile
Pages (AMP) Project and Facebook’s Instant
Articles have made streaming content across
a range of devices and within social networks
quicker and seamless.
Public confidence in news media has not
kept pace with technological advances. The
fragmentation of news and media sources
online raise new types of problem in the
campaigning environment. Media subjectivity
and bias played a vital role in Trump’s campaign
narrative, and in the aftermath of the result.
The very platforms that are increasingly used
to receive news were also called into question,
particularly after the vote.
Grading the performance of major players in
the US election, a November 2016 survey for
the Pew Research Centre found that 30% and
43% of respondents gave Trump and Clinton
respectively A or B ratings, with average
ratings of C- and C respectively. However, the
two most unpopular presidential candidates
ranked higher than the press (22% A and B, D+
average). A full 38% of respondents gave the
press the lowest ‘F’ ranking, 3% more than gave
the same fail grade to Trump.
23
THE CLICKBAIT CAMPAIGN
The new media environment remains in near-permanent
transition: given the rate of change, it is perhaps not surprising
that this election gave rise to an opportunist capable of rolling
with the punches and saturating all mediums with clickbait
headlines and 24-hour stories (looking Trump’s Twitter feed, no
further evidence is required).
His approach was characterised by repetition, simple language
and drowning out all opposition. This was not so much a masterclass in media management on Trump’s part, but an instinctive
ability for self-promotion regardless of the circumstances.
There is no better illustration of the president-elect’s approach
than when he lured reporters to his new hotel in Washington
D.C., ensuring millions of dollars of free marketing and twenty
minutes of coverage of him praising veterans before hinting he
might finally renegade on the ludicrous allegations about Barack
Obama’s birthplace.
News media does not always live up to its noble image it whips
out to defend itself. The political turmoil of 2016 underlined
the distinct challenges laid bare by a rapidly changing media
landscape. First, Facebook was accused of liberal bias for
selecting and editing trending topics to supposedly press a
progressive agenda. Diabolical campaign-media relations on both
sides further eroded public trust: Hillary Clinton went months
without holding a press conference, whilst Donald Trump’s team
persistently verbally and, in at least once instance, physically
attacked the press. However, there are broader themes about
the role of the media in the campaign environment that provide
important lessons for the communications profession in the
future.
Some transformational developments in the media landscape
such as the emergence of clickbait sites and the increasing
dominance of Facebook and Google for news consumption fed
24
into a major international story in the form of the fake news
scandal. The basis of the story, that thousands of false
stories had been produced, viewed and shared millions of times
alongside “authentic” news, raised difficult questions about the
media’s position in society. In turn, those defending freedom of
expression challenged the supposed impartiality of the largest
media providers, and queried the future of satire should action be
taken to ‘bury’ fake news.
Did fake news even matter? Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s
founder, said, “the idea that fake news on Facebook influenced the
election in any way is… pretty crazy.” Rob Ennals, a former product
manager at Google Search, interpreted things differently: “If you
watch Fox News you know you chose to watch Fox. If you click on
a Google Search result you know you didn't click the other ones.
If you read Facebook you think it's reality and don't know how to
find another reality.”
To prove the point, the Wall Street Journal produced a piece
of data journalism titled ‘Blue Feed, Red Feed’, outlining the
pronounced differences in news information received depending
on whether one’s social network was made up of predominantly
conservative or liberal media sources (of course, often received
within a social context where many friends are likely to be from
similar social and economic backgrounds).
In many ways, the scandal drew attention to new conditions
and different rules of engagement, to be considered by political
figures vying for office. Arguably, we just witnessed a masterclass
in the clickbait campaigner: a man so adept at self-promotion
that usual standards simply did not apply. Whilst Trump might
have magnificently saturated various channels of communication
through baiting the press and lining up endless coverage, posttruth politics does not need to become the new normal. There
remains room for facts, despite what we have just seen.
“If you watch Fox
News you know you
chose to watch Fox. If
you click on a Google
Search result you
know you didn’t click
the other ones. If you
read Facebook you
think it’s reality and
don’t know how to
find another reality.”
25
THE ROLE OF THE PRESS
An editorial in The Times responded to the Leveson Inquiry in
2012: “A free press and a people free to express themselves are
the best checks on the behaviour of the rich and the powerful.
The value of journalism is to tell many people what few people
know.” By contrast, Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign chief,
told ABC’s This Week programme that she didn’t think it was
the “job of the media to go and be these virtual fact-checkers.”
The National Union of Journalists might disagree: Articles 3 and
4 of the code of conduct in particular seek to correct harmful
inaccuracies and differentiate between fact and opinion.
Conway’s comments also do not reflect a positive vision of what
the future of journalism might be, a vision this section seeks to
explore.
News media in its multiple forms, disseminated via various
channels, remains the apparatus by which businesses, political
strategists, journalists and voters alike (albeit for different
reasons) keep abreast of important themes and ideas that drive
politicians’ fortunes and shape campaigns. At its best, journalism
still plays an important role in holding candidates to account.
However, in response to changes in how people consumer media,
and to allegations of fake news in the 2016 US election, we can
expect greater collaboration between news organisations and
large technology companies.
POLITICAL CONTEXT:
ACT TODAY, NOT TOMORROW
News media organisations need to adapt to changing political and
technological circumstances. There is no potential of sitting back
and riding out the storm. To do nothing to adapt to the new media
environment has already posed existential challenges to newspapers’
margins. Journalistic integrity is now under attack. To adequately
prepare themselves for the new information age, news media
organisations need to collaborate and defend certain standards.
26
Damian Collins, Chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Select
Committee, recently said fake news “spreads” through the internet
“without regulation from social media platforms”, and poses “the
greatest threat to the credibility of the media”. A Culture, Media
and Sport Inquiry into the phenomenon made a call for evidence
on the issue in February 2017. Yet Collins and others have
somewhat missed the point by creating firewalls between fake
news on social media and substantive investigative journalism.
27
“IDENTIFY, SPECIFICALLY, WHAT THEY BELIEVE
TO BE INACCURATE”
President-Elect Trump’s first press conference of 2017 challenged
Damian Collins’ suggestion that fake news spreading on social
media was somehow distinct from press regulation. It reveals
the multiple colliding forces that have radically destabilized the
orthodox position of the press.
The build-up had been dominated by BuzzFeed’s publication of
a ‘dirty dossier’ that made as yet unverified intelligence reports
that the Russians held compromising material on the PresidentElect. BuzzFeed has been a disruptive change agent in digital
media: press stalwarts such as the BBC, the Telegraph and the
Washington Post have adapted their online offerings in an
28
attempt to compete for clicks, traffic and shares. Its decision to
publish the dossier differed from many other news organisations,
including CNN and the Guardian, who instead commented on
broader allegations from a range of intelligence sources.
During the press conference, Trump vilified the reports as “fake
news” published by “sick people”; he also tweeted that CNN was
responsible for politically motivated and misleading reports. Fox
News made the exceptional move to defend CNN, stating that
the news organisation’s correspondence followed journalistic
standards. CNN’s response reflected ambiguity around these
competing claims as it defended its position against Trump’s
accusations:
“CNN’s decision to publish carefully sourced
reporting about the operations of our government
is vastly different than BuzzFeed’s decision to
publish unsubstantiated memos. The Trump team
knows this. They are using BuzzFeed’s decision
to deflect from CNN’s reporting, which has been
matched by the other major news organizations.”
“We made it clear that we were not publishing any of
the details of the 35-page document because we have
not corroborated the report’s allegations. Given that
members of the Trump transition team have so vocally
criticized our reporting, we encourage them to identify,
specifically, what they believe to be inaccurate.”
Bold editorial statements and cross-organisational maintenance and defence
of journalistic standards go so far in what James Harding of the BBC has
described as “the battle over lies, distortions and exaggerations”. On 12 January
2017, the BBC announced it is launching Permanent Reality Check. James
Harding, added that the BBC is“working with Facebook in particular to see
how we can be effective”. The Facebook Journalism Project, launched on 11
January 2017, will see the social media giant working with news organisations
to develop products to better suit media needs. Such partnerships raise new
potential for advertising revenue, but should also be seen as a possibility for
collaboration to “create a healthy news ecosystem”, including work to curb
news hoaxes. Such projects indicate the potential for a collective effort by
leading media organisations and technology giants to come to terms with
the new contexts where news reaches audiences, in turn adapting editorial
practices and models of reporting.
29
PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS
The presidential debates – among the most-watched political
events in American history – well reflected the campaign trail
with their personal jibes and the lack of policy details. Meanwhile,
the two candidates were two of the least-trusted in history.
Pre-convention, less than one-third of respondents to a NYTCBS poll said Clinton is honest and trustworthy, with Trump
scoring comparably. Political commentators can ponder whether
Clinton’s lack of transparency or Trump’s supposed authenticity
won or lost the White House.
30
The debates are one opportunity, however, for responsible
journalistic license. Bloomberg made headlines by conducting
on-screen fact checks of statements made by both presidential
candidates in the first debate. Other networks informed Politico
that on-screen fact checks would be hard to execute in realtime, hence their decisions to hold candidates accountable in
post-debate analyses. However, much of the technology for more
consistent, methodical fact checking already exists, and could
transform political coverage by the time America goes to the polls
again in 2020.
CASE STUDY:
FULL FACT
Automated, independent fact checking of
candidates’ claims
Despite the fake news controversy, Google have been pioneers in
developing journalistic tools in the digital media environment. In
early 2016, it announced the winners of its Digital News Initiative
as a partnership between Google and news publishers in Europe
to support high quality journalism through technology and
innovation. Founding partners included the Guardian and the
Financial Times. In November 2016 it was announced that the
tech giant would be aiding Full Fact to create a fully automated,
real-time fact-checker to be published by the end of 2017.
Full Fact is a British charity that describes itself as the UK’s
independent fact-checker. It is independent of any party or media
organisation, and exists to check claims made by politicians, the
media and pressure groups, and stop misinformation spreading
by pressing for corrections.
In August 2016, it published a landmark report
on the state of automated fact checking:
“The proliferation of media across
many channels, less airtime and
smaller sound bites together
demand that campaign managers
doggedly stay on message above
all else. This repetition means
automated fact checking can have
real impact, but the proliferation
of different channels is a challenge
for fact-checkers too: as campaigns
get their messages out in ever
more targeted ways, fact-checkers
will have to move quickly to adapt
our monitoring and automated
checking to keep up.”
(THE STATE OF AUTOMATED FACT-CHECKING,
AUGUST 2016, P. 1)
The charity is aiming to build two products by the end of 2017:
Trends and Robocheck. In a press release, Full Fact announced
that it had received €50,000 prototype funding for “FACTS:
Fact-checking Automation and Claim Tracking System”, the
first fully automated end-to-end fact-checking system. There
are two modes: One identifies claims that have previously been
fact-checked and provides short accurate verdicts immediately.
The second innovative mode checks claims automatically using
Natural Language Processing and statistical analysis in real-time.
Full Fact’s Digital Products Manager, Mevan Babkar, told WIRED:
“Robocheck will give people real-time popups of conclusions
about claims so a journalist watching PMQs could have claims
validated or corrected in seconds.” Evidently, such efforts require
extensive data sources: Full Fact is working with the UK’s Office
Much of the technology to improve media and public scrutiny
of candidates in real time already exists, and will likely be widely
available in months. Private partnerships between independent
organisations and technology firms will drive much of this
innovation. It is now up to electoral authorities and media
organisations in particular to build these new technologies into
their role as regulators and scrutinisers of candidates who can
be prone to telling a few too many fibs. Whether a public that
Michael Gove claimed has “had enough of experts” will accept
automated verification as a worthwhile replacement is another
matter entirely.
for National Statistics to use its structured data as part of its
checking tools.
31
ELECTORAL AUTHORITIES:
AUDITORS OR ADJUDICATORS?
The press are not the sole guardians of truth in
civil society. Popular votes in both Britain and
America are run by independent organisations
designed to provide the practical and regulatory
framework for free and fair elections.
Electoral authorities got a bad wrap US election.
Trump repeatedly declared that the vote
was rigged, whilst Jill Stein forced a recount
in Wisconsin amidst claims of voter fraud.
These claims are largely a distraction: whilst
there might be isolated incidents, voter fraud
levels are remarkably low in a country where
over 200 million people are eligible to cast a
ballot. Meanwhile, the coordination of over
10,000 bodies responsible for conducting and
overseeing the election make the prospect of
rigging the White House laughable.
The role of technology in administering
elections requires its own separate report.
Private-sector civic initiatives on Facebook
and Twitter as well as independent campaigns
to register voters and provide additional
information indicate the opportunity for using
new channels to better-educate and engage
potential voters in impartial, informative ways.
Simple Politics, InFacts and Countable.US serve
as UK and US examples of how technology
might improve or evolve the democratic process
to become more inclusive, representative and
relevant to ordinary people beyond the circus of
election season.
These transformative ideas might be in their
infancy, but demonstrate that governments and
electoral authorities should be ingraining digital
approaches into the central nervous system of all
engagements with voters, rather than just buying
up some Facebook advertising space. Laughably,
there were still 18 states in the US election where
even online registration was not possible, and
32
applications for postal votes in some UK councils
still require a printed form to be physically posted
rather than completed online.
As a spokesperson at the Center for Election
Innovation and Research said, state and
federal funding is behind this dearth of digital
democracy. “It’s hard for cash-strapped states
to divert public funds from roads, schools
and hospitals to election management.”
Whilst a classroom or highway has more
obvious benefits to voters, better democratic
institutions theoretically make their concerns
more likely to be heard and addressed, and so
should be considered an equally solid use of
public funds.
Regardless of the longer-term debates about
the role of technology in elections, one vital
theme that should be targeted after recent
ballots is the role of electoral authorities as
referees during campaign season. This directly
applies to Britain as much as America. In a
recent Public Administration and Constitutional
Affairs Committee hearing, William Norton,
Legal Director of Vote Leave, described the
Electoral Commission as “an auditor, not a
referee” because of the length of time it took
to respond to complaints about campaigning
behaviour. Channel 4 News’ investigation into
Conservative campaign expenditure in 2015
similarly raises questions about the efficacy
of the Commission in acting as independent
adjudicator as well as administrator to ensure a
free and fair election.
A fact-checking role with powers to prevent
misleading reports and adequate redress
of untrue claims would be good place for
authorities to start.
MEDIA MONITORING FOR
THE POST TRUTH ERA
The sheer volume of information available on any given issue makes it particularly
difficult to understand what is authoritative. Analytics programmes can gauge reach
and impressions, making it easier to identify and rank key contributors by their relative
importance. However, some are using readily available technology to monitor digital text
in far greater detail.
33
CASE STUDY: QUID
Powering human intuition with machine intelligence
Quid, a Californian start-up is a$empting to use language and linguistics
to make sense of the vast troves of data produced throughout campaigns
and subsequent elections. Its website claims that “it puts the world’s
information at your fingertips and draws connections between big ideas.”
It does so by “ingesting the ideas and opinions expressed in
written language to find patterns and commonalities across a
billion documents,” and builds complex datasets from a myriad
of sources, including news, blogs, patents and companies in
what it calls a “data pipeline”. Quid indexes and categorises the
text-rich data, serving up only those items truly relevant to its
clients’ searches.
Quid’s central claim, that it can “uncover the voice of patients
and physicians, gain quick competitive intelligence and see
where innovation is happening”, is a compelling promise with
appeal beyond politics, as evidenced by its clients: Amongst the
firms employing the product are firms as varied as Publicis, the
Boston Consulting Group, Schroders, Samsung, Pfizer and the
World Economic Forum.
The company has developed proprietary algorithms that “find
and amplify the small signals that are crucial to identifying
actionable insights quickly. These algorithms are optimized for
search, ranking and trend analysis. Quid learns dynamically
from the documents, using the actual textual content instead
of keywords or predetermined topics, thus leading to unbiased
signal and more advanced relationship mapping than simple
keyword matching.”
Dan Bucazer wrote on the company blog days after
Trump’s election: “it’s far too easy to take comfort in looking
at a set of numbers or blue and red lines heading up or down.
But understanding at scale what was actually being said
would have given us the alternative perspectives that often
seemed lacking.”
This matching finds meaningful connections between topics
and documents that conventional search misses. An innovative
application of artificial intelligence and Natural Language
processing has therefore opened an entire new catalogue of
potential insights into huge quantities of text-rich data.
Quid, founded by an Oxford English literature alumnus, prides
itself for maintaining a focus on enhancing and advancing
human intuition, rather than replacing it entirely. A key part
of this approach requires an intuitive interface: No-one wants
death by data. The Quid visualization tool makes data easy to
understand and interpret, so the company professes, for people
without a technical background in data science. Meanwhile,
competitive pricing has made it invaluable for lower-budget
congressional campaigns and more localised battles.
34
Figure 9: The key issues in the first three states to hold presidential
primaries, in early campaign season. Note relationships traced
between issues, regional variation and preponderance of
Trump. Photo: Quid. Source: h!p://www.ibtimes.com/meetquid-silicon-valley-big-data-analytics-startup-hopes-shake-2016presidential-2015618
Despite the failure of Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog (and
a host of other journalists and pollsters) to correctly call the
election, Bucazer claims that there were a few areas within the
Quid proprietary product that actually predicted a win, but that
“they are on the outskirts of the network and not well connected
to the primary narrative, which is of Clinton cruising to victory.”
Processing news and media articles referring to the likelihood of
a Trump win, Quid could quickly highlight apparently disparate
articles that cut through the supposedly homogenous ‘expert’
projection of a Clinton victory. Amongst them, an AI system
called MogIA, the S&P 500 Index and political science models had
all projected a victory.
successfully indicated her unexpected defeat. However, the past
twelve months has undermined the authority of any one poll,
survey or op-ed in accurately reflecting key issues driving voters
to the polls. The unprecedented array of information and insight
available out there make it difficult to gauge with any confidence
how the campaign is being covered beyond one’s Facebook feed
or news website of choice.
Quid might not solve all those issues. But its product builds
a complex, data-driven web of connections between people,
themes and events that adds valuable insight into issues and
flashpoints in the campaign that could otherwise remain hidden
and better prepares users for every eventuality.
Hillary Clinton might find little comfort in reading about how
a series of pundits, journalists and technological models had
35
CONCLUSION
The US election should serve as a warning shot. Trump’s lack
of political record might have provided wiggle-room for his
historically “fluid” stance on climate change, abortion and the
Iraq war, to name three issues. Whilst his success should cause
concern for those who believe politics should have some
grounding in reality, post-truth politics does not have to be the
new standard for political discourse and scrutiny.
In real terms, electoral commissions and political institutions
need to explore methods of independent fact-checking in
real-time to ensure that voters can make an informed political
judgement. Media organisations will have an important role in
making this commitment a reality, and some were pioneers in
this campaign. But there is room for more extensive collaboration
between technology firms and media companies, and the
opportunity to better interrogate claims made on the campaign
trail, should a free press wish to take it.
Some methods would better advance these positive
developments: Full Fact’s report expressed concern that time
and resources were being wasted “reinventing the wheel”. Of
course, there is also a healthy element of competition that might
be helpful in avoiding groupthink and facilitating the proliferation
of a range of media products. It is worth remembering that there
is a common thread linking much of the advances in media
technology: Google’s Digital News Initiative seeks to benefit the
“entire news ecosystem”, an ecosystem dominated by a handful
of companies like Google.
Should Donald Trump seek re-election in 2020, deleting historic
tweets that go against public statements will be the least of his
worries. The technology to instantly hold campaign claims to
account largely already exists. However, such commentary has
not yet been woven seamlessly into user experiences: voters
are not benefiting from the technological advances that should
better enable them to assess the validity of a given argument.
36
Collaborations between organisations like Full Fact and Google
highlight the transformative potential that adequate capital
investment and technological partnerships can signal for political
coverage. However, tackling post-truth politics – which remains
a noble commitment, should we want our governance to have
some basis in reality – requires sustained efforts to hold liars
to account, without seeking to mislead. In the cut-throat age
of post-print media and clickbait headlines, it will take brave
newspaper editors and well-trained journalists to make this
happen. Free speech campaigners should rightly be concerned
about undue censorship or manipulation of stories for political
gain. But if the fake news story tells us anything, it is the power
that search engines and social media has over what we consume.
Navigating a civilised framework of regulation is one of the most
important social imperatives of our time. In Britain, the music
industry has been lobbying for copyright initiatives to drive
pirated material from mainstream access in the Digital Economy
Bill. The Government has been heavily criticised as “prurient”
for being overly moralistic in their regulation and censorship of
pornographic content online.
Major technology companies can precede lawmakers by driving
new initiatives to promote verified material at the expense of
false claims. It is a daunting challenge, but a necessary one that
requires cooperation and good standards by recognised media
companies and politicians spanning the political spectrum
and technology firms, to reach a consensus. The new media
environment is already changing the way we receive and process
information. Seeking a digital ecosystem with clearer hallmarks of
verification is a logical development in this brave new world.
Should Donald Trump
seek re-election in
2020, deleting historic
tweets that go against
public statements will
be the least of
his worries.
37
2020 Vision:
What Happens Next
In this conclusion, there is room to draw out a couple of final themes,
with an eye on future campaigns.
The challenges and opportunities facing both countries for a tumultuous
and uncertain period before the next major US and UK elections,
both scheduled for 2020. It is worth starting to think about how the
campaigning environment has changed, and is likely to advance further.
RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE
MACKAY REPORT
The dust has barely settled from a momentous, disruptive year. In the US, Donald Trump’s rise raises profound questions not merely for
campaigning, but for methods of governance.
The new President has already upset the applecart, arriving in Washington with a muddled set of beliefs, bouncing from one spat to the
next, scorching earth without coming to terms with the nuance of policy and planning. As David Runciman eloquently described in the
London Review of Books, “Trump has no experience of how to do any of it: he isn’t a politician, and the chances are that it will be done
badly, with lurching heavy-handedness and regular bouts of outright incompetence.”
Ham-fisted media management and policy announcements via Twitter (not to mention the resistance, in the form of clogged antiTrump social media feeds and e-petitions) point to a more direct relationship between people and government. Rule by tweet might be
unique to Trump. How this historical administration fares could end up defining the future form that western democracy takes.
I am loathe to compare Brexit and Trump – although the rhetoric of the EU referendum was at times unsavoury, and the spike in hate
crimes after the vote has been truly deplorable, I think it does a disservice to the Leave campaign to liken their actions and sentiments
to the new President’s staggering record.
However, both events shook the foundations of the political establishment, and have led to premature proclamations about the end
of democracy and the death of liberalism. For those who were surprised by both outcomes, there are several lessons we can take from
campaigning and media developments in 2016 without throwing in the towel and embracing a post-truth, populist politics.
These recommendations can be given in the form of several themes, and for the perspective of several different stakeholders.
38
POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS
Be where your audience is
Dominic Cummings, a lead strategist for Vote Leave, has
quietly provided a series of thoroughly engaging reflections on
his triumph last summer. His musings on the Voter Intention
Collection System (without which, he claims, David Cameron
“would still be on the No. 10 sofa with a glass of wine and a James
Bond flick”) provides a powerful insight into the intelligence of
data strategy of the designated Leave campaign. Cummings’
amusing disinclination towards most politicians provokes a
stinging rebuke:
“Our biggest obstacle was not the
IN campaign and its vast resources
but the appalling infighting on our
own side driven by all the normal
human motivations described in
Thucydides – fear, interest, the
pursuit of glory and so on. Without
this obstacle we would have done
far more on digital/data.”
It was very easy with Donald, Nigel and Boris guffawing to victory
to think that 2016 was defined, as 19th century Thomas Carlyle
described, by great men – electoral magicians bewitching voters
to do their bidding at the ballot box.
However, this underestimates the sound political
intelligence behind aspects of both Trump’s and Vote Leave’s
campaigns. There is no silver bullet with which all elections
can be won. But campaigns of all colours should take stock
of recent developments:
•
Be where your audience is. The advice of Edmonds Elder,
digital strategists behind the Conservatives in 2015 and the
Britain Stronger in Europe campaign were on to something,
despite their defeat in the referendum.
•
This relates to polling and political advertising alike. Dominic
Cumming’s explanation about the Voter Intention Collection
System demonstrates an agile, decentralised way of
measuring opinion at the grass roots in critical battlefields.
•
The technology for understanding different groups and,
increasingly, individuals in unprecedented levels of
granularity mean political strategy is entering unchartered
territory.
•
Key areas of development for campaigners in 2020 should
involve consideration of behavioural and psychographic
techniques to refine and drive messaging and reach vital
audiences with peak impact on the overall result.
DOMINIC CUMMINGS, VOTE LEAVE
39
ELECTION INFRASTRUCTURE
Invest to make democratic institutions that
are appropriate for a connected electorate
As the Center for Election Innovation and Research told me,
it is hard to sell investment in the ballot box to voters when
schools are under resourced, healthcare premiums are high and
incarceration rates are through the roof. But enfranchisement
and adequate access to political engagement should not be seen
as an optional add-on, but as a civil right that contributes towards
more representation government.
40
•
Changes to voter registration in Britain were not adequately
explained to young people and students in particular;
meanwhile the crash in the online registration system in
the run-up to the EU referendum deadline evidenced the
necessity of online voter systems fit for purpose.
•
Government should invest in accessible online voter
registration and postal vote registration: it should be
intuitive for all generations and socioeconomic backgrounds
to be able to have a say in the democratic process, and to
check whether they are enfranchised. As outlined in chapter
2, technological advance should make this easier than ever.
•
It is too easy to argue against investment in democratic
processes: the money could always be spent on roads,
hospitals and schools. However, the long-term health of our
representative system relies on accessible channels of civic
engagement. This should not be ignored.
ELECTORAL COMMISSION
Build a more responsive
officiating body to
oversee elections
One of the most disturbing aspects
of my US experience was witnessing
Trump’s disregard for established election
conventions. Prior to 8 November, he
made claims that the vote would be
rigged, threatened to use executive
powers to jail “Crooked Hillary”, and failed
to commit to accepting the result of the
ballot when asked in a televised debate
before tens of millions of Americans.
Many Republicans I spoke to downplayed
these acts as nothing more than
campaign bravado; “he’ll settle down when
he gets into office”.
This is not good enough. I found many
of Trump’s opinions objectionable, but I
would also defend his right to hold them
(and be held to account for holding them).
I am more partisan on the issue of
democracy. An election is not a game of
suspense, nor should it be a platform to
make factually incorrect accusations
about the administration of the vote,
an act that in turn was corrosive to
democratic institutions and processes.
Closer to home, the EU referendum raised
questions on both sides about conduct,
claims and spending by both campaigns.
Looking to future elections, we should
consider the environment in which the
battle for votes is fought:
•
The Public Administration Select
Committee should seek evidence
and consider revising the Electoral
Commission’s powers, bolstering its
capacity to respond to inaccurate,
misleading or improper behaviour in
real time rather than in retrospect,
and impartially impose sanctions
or restrictions on campaigns found
to be acting in contravention of the
agreed boundaries.
•
This proposal would intend to raise
the standard of political campaigning
to ensure that voters can make as
well-informed a decision as possible.
•
It would ensure that the Electoral
Commission is not only an
administrator of elections, but the
overarching impartial adjudicator to
ensure free and fair ballots.
Rethinking the role of our Electoral
Commission, to make it more responsive
and effective in ensuring a fair fight, would
be a good place to start as a means of
moderating political debate in a fiercely
partisan context.
CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT COMMITTEE
Identify the real threat behind concerns
about fake news
A Culture, Media and Sport inquiry into the phenomenon of fake
news is expected later this year. Whilst it is welcome that the CMS
Select Committee is reflecting on topical issues about changes
to the media ecosystem, it should be cautious about the focus of
its exertions.
Some fake news has enhanced politics: Joseph Addison
established the satirical 18th century Spectator “to enliven
morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality”. The Daily
Mash and Newsthump continue to hold politicians’ feet to the
capacity to mock, ridicule and question the powerful
without censorship or fear. If one overriding truth existed in
politics, debate would be unnecessary. That is not the way
the world works.
The Select Committee might investigate the actual significance
of fake news: how widespread and read fake articles are, and
whether these have had any impact on voter understanding and
behaviour. However, one cannot help but feel that this approach
could be something of a red herring in a world of news that is
never black and white, but fifty shades of grey. A government
inquiry into how changing media distribution and consumption
more broadly affects public opinion and political understanding
across society would be a better place to start.
fire, and continue a key component of a strong democracy: the
41
MEDIA ORGANISATIONS
1
THE POWER OF THE PRESS
Post-Leveson government-press relations have not been
particularly cosy. On-going controversy around Section 40
demonstrates the difficulty in making competing interests see
eye-to-eye, and highlights the many legitimate grievances the
press might have in facing government regulation.
These issues exist in a strained political context: Theresa May’s
criticism that “every stray word and every hyped up media report
is going to make it harder for us to get the right deal for Britain”
seemingly called on the press to tow the party line when it is
clearly within their rights to do the opposite. No.10’s designated
European press briefings, meanwhile, indicate that Government
is concerned the country’s papers might give Brussels the
wrong idea. The pen is, after all, mightier than the sword.
Figure 12
Efforts at press regulation have. so far stalled. A free press is all
very well, but editorial defences against press regulation focus
on the real strengths of the press: its capacity to investigate,
challenge and inform. Yet these arguments are based on the
assumption that editors and journalists abide by their own code
of conduct, act in good faith, print the truth and do not seek to
overly mislead the public.
Changes in media publication
and consumption have, however,
made that a lot harder to ensure.
Meanwhile, our newspapers
continue to exert a large cultural
influence on public opinion.
The dilemma is without obvious
solution. Even the lengthy
Leveson Inquiry failed to find
a regulatory framework that
secured the co-operation of
editors. But in the unresolved
impasse perhaps editors might
consider more fully the risks to
them in future of continuing to
play fast and loose with the facts
while claiming to be crusaders
after the truth.
42
Figure 11
“Perhaps editors might
consider more fully the
risks to them in future
of continuing to play
fast and loose with the
facts while claiming to be
crusaders a#er the truth.”
Figure 10
2
COLLABORATE TO ENSURE
JOURNALISTIC STANDARDS
This report has explored several aspects of the evolving media
landscape; Donald Trump is the first Presidential candidate
to exploit a social media driven news agenda to optimise
clicks, views and shares, maximising return on investment. His
campaign was driven by an instinctive capacity for self-publicity
rather than any overarching strategy, but it revealed the lack
of understanding we have about the underpinning framework
behind our news media ecosystem.
Increased collaboration across partisan boundaries is essential to
navigate this challenging atmosphere:
•
International journalistic collaboration has already proved
immensely effective at challenging powerful vested
interests and serving the public interest. The International
Consortium of Investigative Journalism, for example, has
produced pioneering work on the Panama Papers. Such
global networks, providing they are transparently funded, will
become increasingly important to speak truth to power.
•
Domestic collaboration to maintain effective scrutiny of
politicians will become more important in both the UK and
the US. The White House Press Corps made this point clear
in an open letter to Trump before his inauguration; Theresa
May’s avoidance of Sunday interviews and preference for
op-eds in the Sun rather than answer day-to-day questions
from the media to explain her stance on Brexit similarly
points toward the need for a more unified front by political
correspondents so that stories that matter get heard.
Disagreements about taste, ethics, taste and fair comment
will remain, as the White House Press Corps added.
•
Verification and fact checking should become a greater
part of quality journalism. Bloomberg, the BBC and
Facebook are trialling new software already. Evidently,
these developments will supplement rather than supplant
commentary and analysis. But if professional journalists
maintain a commitment to objective truth as outlined in
their code of conduct, a cross-media collaboration over
fact checking could be one way to raise industry standards
without government regulation.
The next four years and beyond will see news organisations
and technology companies collaborate to better understand
this framework. This can be said confidently: commercialising
digital offerings is a prerequisite for many media outlets’ survival.
The Facebook Journalism Project provided a challenge to fake
news, but it also underlined the potential for new news products
and services that might further transform journalistic output in
innovative ways.
This is exciting for a broader audience: savvy political
campaigners, public affairs consultancies and journalists should
recognise the potential for radically different formats that will
continue to transform how news is conveyed.
However, there is a broader historical challenge that the recent
US election has thrown to the foreground. The fake news scandal
after the election hints at a broader issue about partisanship
in the press. A varied media is a welcome feature of western
democracies. However, there must be collaboration between
major media outlets to assure quality standards. Already,
the term fake news is being used by the new White House to
delegitimise critics of Trump’s stances and approaches. Fox News
defending CNN in the new President’s first press conference of
2017 was a vital intervention to defend journalistic standards in
the face of unjustified attack. The fake news scandal reflected
broader issues about polarised press agendas, echo chambers
of media consumption, and a broadly fragmented media
environment.
Figures 10, 11, 12:
Daily Mail: h!ps://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/
nov/04/enemies-of-the-people-british-newspapers-react-judgesbrexit-ruling
Daily Express: h!p://www.express.co.uk/pictures/
galleries/6644/Daily-Express-Newspaper-cover-EUreferendum-Brexit-pictures
The Sun: h!p://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/11/24/sun-onein-five-british-muslims_n_8635588.html
43
TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES
Provide a platform to innovate in ways that
facilitate a more informed audience
The media environment has drastically changed in the last five
years. A handful of social media sites and search engines now
provide much of the infrastructure for publishing, sharing and
reading news and comment today, and go beyond conventional
media companies: these sites define the environment for how
many people receive content online.
•
Extend civic engagement programmes. Facebook and
Twitter have led the way in voter registration exercises,
and have triggered surges through organic campaigns
on their sites. This area of political engagement is ripe for
further collaborations between the companies and
electoral administrators.
•
Trial new modes of editorial frameworks. News media
organisations have already signed up to collaborate
with major tech companies in fact-checking exercises.
Developing and extending these partnerships will be
important in future: third-party verification of content
within exciting new platforms is one way of balancing the
competing demands of freedom of expression and editorial
standards in forums where vast quantities of content are
being generated every second.
•
The passing of the Digital Economy Bill has showed the
challenges of administering effective policy over a vast new
area of public and social life. Tech firms such as Google and
Microsoft’s voluntary anti-piracy measures demonstrate the
potential for private companies to lead over public policy
without heavy handed Government action. This collaborative
attitude will be important in future policy debates over how
people engage online.
Patronage efforts such as the Facebook Journalism Project and
the Google Digital News Initiative demonstrate the potential for
new types of content and revenue streams for media companies,
advertisers and political campaigners alike. However, the
new media ecosystem has changed patterns of consumption
drastically. Challenges arising from this brave new world are only
just being engaged with.
44
A handful of social
media sites and
search engines now
provide much of the
infrastructure for
publishing, sharing
and reading news
and comment today,
and go beyond
conventional media
companies
45
OVERALL CONCLUSION
This report has sought to highlight the changed status of digital strategy in campaigns, and the
potential for further transformative improvements in campaign efficiency, targeting and return on
investment. Advances in data strategy are still murky, but hint at the potential to drive campaigns
with unprecedented understanding of intimate details about target audiences. In turn, future
campaigning has the potential to build policy that is better focused on voter concerns. In contrast,
specific adverts might have the capacity to manipulate individuals’ emotions by using language and
imagery their digital footprint suggests would make them respond in certain ways, at certain times.
These new developments are as powerful as they are unknown.
The second aspect of the report that might be particularly topical relates to new challenges
about the broader campaigning landscape, brought into sharp focus by 2016’s elections. The
digital revolution in media, communications and social engagement has been swift, and brought
with it a host of unintended consequences and new problems as well as opportunities. The news
media might have invested heavily in new platforms to try and maintain profits in an increasingly
competitive and challenging market. But there remains great potential for collaboration between
media companies, technology firms and electoral authorities to better scrutinise and hold public
figures to account.
Trump’s campaign was no master-class, nor is he a masterful politician. This report will not suggest
that what just happened will, or should, serve as the blueprint for future votes. The 2016 US election
was fought between two unlikeable candidates, and was won by one who lied through his teeth to
get to the White House. Some might say he skilfully played the media whilst tapping into popular
sentiments beyond the Beltway, as any successful campaign must do. The cynic in me would argue
that he bullied and bluffed his way through an election in which voters wanted change, didn’t believe
half of what he said, and had seen enough of her to know that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t shake things
up in the same way. His dreadful popularity ratings, far below Hillary Clinton’s, suggest as much.
Where does this leave the political establishment, perceived campaign wisdom, and the future
of democracy? This report has sought to highlight some of the trends in digital strategy, voter
engagement, and reflect on the role and opportunities for news media and electoral commissions
in broad and schematic ways. However, no tweet or targeted Facebook advert is going to solve the
fundamental issues of globalisation, a low-wage economy, cycles of deprivation, inequality
of opportunity and access to already-stretched resources for the general public to get on in life
and thrive.
That is not to say that digital campaigning innovations are not going to change the relationship
between voter, candidate, media and other stakeholders. But these innovations should be viewed
as means by which politicians win power to improve the lives of their electorate. Then, the hard work
addressing the big challenges facing society can really begin.
46
47
70 Gray’s Inn Road
London
WC1X 8BT
T +44 20 7400 4480
[email protected]
hanovercomms.com @hanovertweets