Artificial Intelligence and Democratic Politics
| Author | Birgit Schippers |
| Published date | 01 March 2020 |
| Date | 01 March 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/2041905820911746 |
32POLITICAL INSIGHT•MARCH 2020
In the run-up to the 2016 US
presidential election, Donald Trump’s
team hired a little-known Anglo-
American company called Cambridge
Analytica (CA) to work on the Republican
candidate’s social media campaign. CA
used data analysis techniques to target tens
of millions of voters across the US with pro-
Trump messages. The company’s activities
were made possible by the harvesting of
data from over 50 million Facebook users,
without their consent or knowledge.
Assisted by a specifically designed
algorithm, the profiles of Facebook users
Artificial
Intelligence and
Democratic Politics
From digital campaigning to social media, the internet has
transformed politics. But the rise of artificial intelligence poses even
more profound challenges for democratic processes. C an democracy
survive in the age of AI? Birgit Schippers investigates.
were analysed to identify personality
traits and potential voting intentions. This
information, in turn, helped to identify
swing voters and micro-target them
with messages that, according to critics,
constituted deliberate misinformation.
Today, as the US prepares for another
presidential election and Britain has left
the European Union after a referendum
characterised by aggressive social media
targeting, Cambridge Analytica has
become a by-word for technology-driven
interferences in elections. The data analysis
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