This is the new world of targeted advertising that runs our world today. For every Google search, Amazon purchase, and Youtube Video you watch, your information is being tracked and sold to build together a demographic profile. Your information is a commodity, and the people who sell and buy this information can turn right around and target ads towards you that they know you will want.
Similarly, in this modern political spectrum, this is becoming an increasingly more important topic as social media giants like Facebook become more and more integral in our everyday lives. Campaigns are becoming more and more reliant on advertising campaigns targeted through Facebook and other mediums to appeal to the average voter. The average senator, for example, according to FiveThirtyEight spent just about half their budget on ads run across all forms of media. Take Senator Beto O'Rourke, for example; in his 2018 Senator campaign, he spent just about 5.3 million dollars on ads for Facebook.
Increasingly, social media platforms also face a dilema of allowing political ads on their platform. Take Twitter, for example, which just banned paid political ads on their platform, citing reasons such as fame must be earned and not simply bought.
This raises the ultimate question of whether political campaigns are just becoming a race to who can raise the most money and spend the most on targeted ads in order to win their political bid and what these giant social media platforms can do or must do to combat it.
Increasingly, social media platforms also face a dilema of allowing political ads on their platform. Take Twitter, for example, which just banned paid political ads on their platform, citing reasons such as fame must be earned and not simply bought.
This raises the ultimate question of whether political campaigns are just becoming a race to who can raise the most money and spend the most on targeted ads in order to win their political bid and what these giant social media platforms can do or must do to combat it.
I think that this poses a real problem for those who want to be represented but don't have the money to bolster a candidate that would represent a large amount of the poor. If winning the democracy becomes a question of fundraising, those who were rich in the first place are the ones with the highest chance of winning. Those who, despite possibly having a large base of support, don't have a lot of campaign funds, will lose out. Election reforms could help fight this issue, though.
ReplyDeleteI think this is an important issue to raise awareness around because in addition to candidates not have a level playing ground, many social media users aren't always educated about politics and the real motives behind each candidate. In other words, if a social media user sees an ad that appeals to them, they may sway towards that candidate without really knowing what they stand for and who they're running against. The ad is almost like their first impression, and that impression may very well be misleading. This also relates back to the advantages of each candidate, because ones who run more ads with a larger sum of money can likely win the votes of many who don't truly know what they're voting for.
ReplyDeleteThis was a really important point to bring up, that targeted advertising can make a real difference with a political candidate. Campaigning wouldn't be possible without campaign funds, and the amount of money that a candidate has plays a big role in the amount of representation that they get. It's also important to note that there are a lot of people who are not very aware politically, could end up just voting for the candidates that they've seen or heard of before. Without a large amount of funding for the campaign means not a lot of ads, which means less votes for that candidate.
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