How Political Parties Use Social Media Data Mining
With provincial elections underway in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, many in both provinces are beginning to see political ads in their social media feeds.
As the political landscape has inverse, and then has the mode political parties look to influence voters at the ballot box.
Now, experts are alarm that digital engineers are using online data — collected from your digital footprint — to potentially sway how y'all vote.
"Facebook has tons of data, and these are all pieces of information that are all accessible to advertisers," digital strategist Aleem Fidai told Global News.
"Political parties are utilizing your information."
Fidai is the CEO at Exposed Marketing, a company that specializes in targeted online ads.
"Using Facebook and social platforms, nosotros tap into a user and nosotros observe demographics and nosotros target very hyper-targeted ads to these people," said Fidai.
According to Fidai, one tool that political digital strategists employ is Pixel, a Facebook add-on that tracks embedded code on websites to aid develop custom audiences for political ads.
"Voters tin be definitely swayed and Facebook makes information technology a ton easier," Fidai said.
A social media expert from Brandon University, Chris Schneider, said Facebook is adversely affecting democracy.
"There's no doubt that members of a variety of political parties are using information that's garnered from non only social media, but other online sites," said Schneider.
According to Schneider, the power to persuade with targeted ads on Facebook using mined data from social media is an inherent threat to commonwealth.
"This is a company that'due south based in the U.s.a., and if this going to take any kind of influence on the elections in British Columbia or Saskatchewan, information technology's entirely problematic," Schneider said.
"I retrieve that as other people have pointed out, Facebook hither simply has too much power here to control and influence democracy."
A recent Ipsos poll done for exclusively for Global News showed that 77 per cent of Canadians remember more needs to exist done to regulate social media in Canada, and Schneider agrees.
"I recollect new policies, new laws, need to be passed to ensure that Facebook and other social media are constant by these laws in the involvement of democracy," Schneider said.
But until new policy changes or new laws are in place, Fidai has a suggestion of his ain for regulation during an election.
"Log out."
© 2020 Global News, a segmentation of Corus Amusement Inc.
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