Joyce Fegan: Online ads designed to influence your vote
Ads on social media and emotive content created by activists are largely ungovernable and designed to influence electoral behaviour, says
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In the last week, how many times have you shared screenshots of political jokes or captioned photographs of political candidates in your WhatsApp groups or Facebook feed?
In the world of online electioneering, anything goes, because there are no laws.
With the general election to be held on February 8, the political parties are doing everything to get your vote, especially online.
You have either been the target of paid ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Google (especially if you’re a man living in Dublin), or else you’ve come across viral organic content, manufactured to tap into your emotions, especially your rage.
The more you feel, the more you like, comment, and share.
The spoke to Facebook, to tech activists who are tracking activity online, and to academics who are analysing the effect of all of this on our voting choices and on our democracy.
Online electioneering can be divided into two camps: there are the paid ads, which appear in ‘transparency libraries’ on Facebook and Google, and there is the organic or non-paid content, which is created and shared widely by political activists who are gunning for your attention and vote.
The paid ads are much easier to track and analyse.
In seven days, from January 16 to January 22, parties and candidates ramped up their spending online, especially on Facebook.
On Facebook ads, Fine Gael spent €20,771 in those seven days, and the party’s leader, Leo Varadkar, has also been spending heavily on social media ads.
His Facebook page spent between €4,000 and €4,500 on a single ad that ran from January 14 to January 16. It garnered more than one million impressions on Facebook. It was a video that was shown mostly to men living in Dublin.
Fianna Fáil spent €3,155 on Facebook ads in those seven days, with the party’s leader, Micheál Martin’s page spending €173. One ad from Mr Martin’s page also heavily targeted men living in Dublin.
Sinn Féin increased its spending, too. The party’s page spent €4,152 on Facebook ads.
One big concern with online electioneering is the risk of foreign influence.
There are two things to note about this from last week’s campaign.
Facebook removed an ad from Aontú candidate, James Hope, in Roscommon. The ad spend was recorded in US dollars.
“After this ad started running, we determined that it’s related to politics or issues of national importance. We require advertisers to pay for this type of ad in the currency that matches the country where the ad is shown. We took this ad down, because the currency and country targeting didn’t match,” said Facebook.
And it’s not just candidates and parties who are taking out paid ads. A far-right media outlet operating in Ireland is taking out ads targeting Fine Gael and their candidates.
The transparency section of this page says that it has 13 people in Ireland, and one person in Brazil, managing its profile.
When it comes to Google ads, or ads on YouTube, parties are spending here, too, but at a much lower rate.
354 Irish political ads have run on Google since March 21, 2019, totalling €15,650.
So, who, and what, is behind the ads, the spend, and the content you’re inadvertently sharing in WhatsApp and on Facebook?
One expert, Sam Jeffers, who has developed a free-to-use piece of software, called Who Targets Me, explained how the social media staff of political parties are trying to influence voters online.
“Parties will talk about policy and leadership and why opponents are so bad: some is positive, some is negative. It’s always this mix,” said Jeffers.
They’re trying to find people who will respond to that content. They see what’s working and do more of it — they get feedback from platforms stats.
“We see quite a lot of video — people like video — people taking clips off TV, where an opponent says something terrible. They clip that and put some money behind it and get traction online,” Jeffers said.
He also explained the two types of content that parties will push out.
“There are ads and non-paid content. Where parties can control things is in the advertising, whereas, for the non-paid content, you’re hitting and hoping. What we saw in the UK election was that everyone expected the Conservatives to spend more on ads, but it seems, in the end, they did some of that, but they decided to run content that got people talking, that was deliberately provocative, in a way that the media talked about it,” said Jeffers.
Dr Eileen Culloty, from DCU, and who works in disinformation, said the media has a responsibility not to amplify content that was designed to be provocative.
“If candidates make a racist or sexist remark, that they know will garner media coverage, it’s important for journalists and editors to be mindful of what they report on,” said Ms Culloty. “They’ve had no training in this for journalists, and they are under huge pressure to get stories out, but it’s a matter of covering the news without amplifying it,” she said.
Ms Culloty emphasised the need for the public to be media literate. For example, if you see something online, be that a link to a story or a joke with a photo and a caption, can you find a source? If you can’t, take it with a “pinch of salt,” she said.
The digital campaigns are run by low-paid juniors, who are working long hours to push this content out.
“People who are monitoring, or working on, social media for political parties are not well-paid. They’re junior roles, so when an ill-judged tweet goes out, we blame the party,” said Ms Culloty.
However, Sam Jeffers said that for high-level consultancy for campaigns, Irish political candidates have hired help from abroad, even if they are using junior staff to push out content online.
“Irish parties do have a history of hiring from abroad,” said Mr Jeffers.
In a very close election, he said that “fine-grained decisions that people are making based on information they’re seeing online makes a difference.”
This kind of information is designed to make you feel angry or motivated enough to share parties’ and candidates’ content for them.
Niamh Kirk, a researcher in UCD, has been tracking online political activity for several years now. She said the public can expect to see more paid and non-paid content fighting for their attention in the final days.
“It’s only been a week or so. Judging by previous monitoring projects, the last 10 days is when things ramp up,” Ms Kirk said.
With political money being spent predominantly on Facebook, what is the platform doing to ensure fair play online, considering there is no legislation to which parties have to adhere?
Dualta Ó Broin is head of public policy for Facebook and said the policing of online electioneering has improved greatly over the last four years.
“We’ve come a very long way since 2016, the last US presidential election. We’ve had a vast investment into a range of measures, to increase transparency: there’s been a huge investment,” Ó Broin said.
Can the same online trends of ‘fake news’ and disinformation that appeared in the US or UK occur here?
“It’s difficult to make a prediction on that.
“Every election can be different and every candidate can make their own decisions, based on how they’re doing. It’s hard to say: ‘we expect X or we expect Y’,” said Mr Ó Broin.
However, he did admit that the platform is watching what’s going on with this Irish election.
“There is a high focus in the company on the Irish election, at the moment, to make sure nothing untoward happens,” he said, but added that the platform’s monitoring and transparency measures are running all the time, regardless.
In the vacuum of legislation, groups such as the Irish Council for Civil Liberties have come together to ask parties to sign the fair play pledge to behave respectfully online. Several parties have signed up to the pledge, including Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
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