Targeted political advertising can potentially exclude voter segments from important political information, and undermine the democratic process
Research articles on INFORMATION & DATA
A young entrepreneur finds herself battling uphill against GDPR enforcement organisations in an effort to bring her AI personal assistant to the market. Can her technological wits outwin the legal shortcuts these organisations have in place?
Who will own the smart things smart things create?
Algorithmic processing of personal data is challenging the role of consent. Which are the necessary adaptations to maintain this important tool in data protection regulation?
In the wake of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, it is timely to review the state of the debate about the impact of data-driven elections and to identify key questions that require academic research and regulatory response. The papers in this collection, by some of the world’s most prominent elections researchers, offer that assessment.
Discussing three factors that characterise the activities of political campaigners, this article demonstrates variations in who is using data in campaigns, what the sources of campaign data are, and how data informs communication.
This paper analyses the spread of misinformation in the context of 2018 Brazilian elections. We give a general overview of the Brazilian political context, its media ecosystem and the weaponisation of the country’s most popular messaging app, WhatsApp, as a political persuasion tool. The current architecture of the platform does not allow, once appropriated for purposes of election campaigns, users to notice or become aware that they are being monitored and managed.
Is the “European approach” an adequate response to the challenges of disinformation and political manipulation, especially in election periods?
This article identifies factors that could explain the increasing pressure to regulate Québec’s political parties’ uses of digital voter information.
This paper examines how Google Search ranked 29 junk news domains between 2016 and 2019, finding that SEO — rather than paid advertising — is the most important strategy for generating discoverability via Google Search. Google has taken several steps to combat the spread of disinformation on Search, and these strategies have been largely successful at limiting the discoverability of junk news.