The digital age is seen as an era of transparency, but is it really so? More than ever, political campaigns carry the nature of eye-catching
In less than a month, Israeli citizens will vote for the third time in a year. The digital age is seen as an era of openness and transparency, an era where all information is one click away from us. But is that really the case? In the Big Data era, more than ever, online political campaigns carry the nature of illusion, concealment and eye-catching.
The main campaign platform is still Facebook. Although Facebook is seen as a platform that primarily appeals to older audiences, it still functions as the digital city square. In recent campaigns, we have seen increasing use of politicians' live (Facebook Live) broadcasts as a detour to traditional media broadcasts, as well as the use of hidden (sometimes controversial) messages that are hidden from view and can only be seen by their messengers .
More interesting are the campaigns that appeal to segmented and / or specific populations - from Instagram, which delivers stories in storytelling, images and short videos, especially to Y and Z generations; For clashes of media and politics on Twitter, perceived as an elitist platform for MKs or heavy users; through more blatant, less formal messages to the convinced Wotsap and Telegram, through dedicated political groups as well as party groups;
Facebook is a political player for everything and interest in the latest election campaigns. Sometimes it responds to requests from the Central Election Commission and sometimes not; sometimes it enforces internal and sometimes non-internal rules of policy. The tool launched by Facebook before the March 2019 election campaign - the Political Ads Archive - offers apparent transparency. It allows viewing of all sponsored ads posted on Facebook, and so It is possible for anyone interested to know what factors are behind the ads, how much money they have spent, what gender the ad was directed to and in what area, but to which: Facebook did not monitor pages that defined themselves as news pages, real profiles operated by interested parties (free or paid) And political advertisers Do not identify. Moreover, the archive provides only general data about the exposure of the political ads and vague term cost of the ad, while the index of political awareness is important audience - and for which no information can be found.
In the era of the Cambridge Analytica post of micro-segmentation, creating a customized campaign for every voter and electorate - the ability to publicly and critically scrutinize the proposed public campaigns is shrinking, and is dependent on public collaborations based on screenshots, such as a turgid project. A Facebook post last month stating that "we will not limit false statements by politicians" in stating freedom of expression continues the line the company is taking in the US presidential election - increasing the need for free press and public scrutiny in the latest pre-election election.
The writer is a faculty member at Bar Ilan University's School of Communication and specializes in online politics