Political advertising

Article extract: "An app that the UK’s governing party launched last year — for Conservative Party activists to gamify, ‘socialize’ and co-ordinate their campaigning activity — has been quietly pulled from app stores..." "...We know the name of the Conservative Campaigner app’s supplier because this
Article extract: "A meaty first report by the UK parliamentary committee that’s been running an inquiry into online disinformation since fall 2017, including scrutinizing how people’s personal information was harvested from social media services like Facebook and used for voter profiling and the
Article extract: ""People with center-right views feel like the big social platforms, Facebook and Twitter, are not sympathetic to their views,” said Thomas Peters, the chief executive of uCampaign, a start-up in Washington that developed the N.R.A., Great America and Trump campaign apps. “It’s
Article extract: "Ireland's two largest anti-abortion campaigns are facing questions over privacy after a BuzzFeed News analysis found that personal user data gathered by both of their apps can be shared with an international network of conservative and religious groups that includes the US National
Article extract- translated from the original French. "A political big data company with close ties to the federal liberals and which worked on Emmanuel Macron's campaign in France is setting up its head office in Old Montreal to continue its growth and take advantage of Montreal's digital vitality
Article extract: "Amid concerns about the rampant spread of “fake news”— and fearful memories of scores of deaths during the 2007 election— it was another seismic development in a fraught election. Last weekend, staffers at Aristotle, an American data firm working for the opposition party, were
02 Nov 2020
Following the Trump re-election campaign's "block" purchase of Youtube homepage ad space - known as its masthead - in early 2020, Youtube has announced that it will be “retiring” reservations for full-day advertisements on its coveted homepage ad spot beginning in 2021, a change it said it
20 Feb 2020
The Trump re-election campaign reportedly purchased advertising space on the Youtube homepage for early November, ensuring that Trump-affiliated political ads will be featured prominently on the platform prior to Election Day on November 3rd. Ads on the Youtube masthead (as the video on top of the
03 Nov 2020
On Election Day, there were some reports of Facebook users not seeing the "Why am I seeing this ad" information tab on political ads appearing on their newsfeeds. Affected users were shown an error message stating "You can't use this feature right now. We limit how often you can post, comment or do
30 Oct 2020
Less than a week before the election, the Democratic Party reported that Facebook's social media advertising systems had prevented the campaign from running some ads, allegedly resulting in the loss of more than $500,000 in potential campaign donations. According to Facebook, the flaws resulted from
30 Apr 2019
The New York Times picked 16 categories (like registered Democrats or people trying to lose weight) and targeted ads at people in them. They used the ads to reveal the invisible information itself, noting that it is a "story of how our information is used not just to target us but to manipulate
29 Sep 2017
In the lead up to the 2017 German federal election (Bundestagswahl), all political parties used social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and e-mails as platforms to reach voters. The far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) reportedly hired a Texas-based company for their
10 Aug 2017
In the lead up to the German elections, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) created a mobile app, Connect 17, which was designed to create a feedback loop between party headquarters and door-to-door volunteers (also known as canvassers). The app drew on data from the federal statistics
02 Apr 2018
The Sunday edition of the national newspaper Bild reported that Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) party and the centre-right Free Democrats (FDP) party purchased "more than a billion" pieces of personal data about potential voters from a subsidiary of Deutsche Post
21 Nov 2017
Before and after the Italian election on 4 March 2018, concerns were raised about the spread of misinformation, disinformation and inflammatory content through a network of news sites and Facebook pages. In November 2017, in the run up to the election, Buzzfeed reported on links between a large
19 Jun 2018
In an experiment conducted by Fabio Chiusi and Claudio Agosti during the 2018 election season and set out in detail in their report for Tactical Tech, the duo sought to investigate the Facebook algorithm that powers users’ news feed and the algorithm’s treatment of political content. One of the