We Coded 2,500 UK General Election Adverts - Here’s What We Learned
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20419058231181288 |
| Author | Isaac Silver,Ren Thompson,William Bruce,James Brown,Clover Hamilton,Kate Dommett |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
24POLITICAL INSIGHT•JUNE 2023
The 2019 General Election saw an
unprecedented deluge of online political
advertising. A remarkable 53 per cent of all
election spending on advertising was spent
on digital platforms. With the next general
election coming into view there are growing
calls to reform political advertising and end
deceptive campaign practices, particularly
online. Just ve years on from Cambridge
Analytica, there is still concern that online
political advertising can be manipulative,
misleading and problematic for democracy.
And yet, whilst people are familiar with
stories of personality proled ads and voter
suppression activities, when we think about
our own experience of political advertising
on platforms such as Facebook, it’s rare to
recall particularly concerning practices. This
raises an important question: exactly how is
political advertising being used in elections?
To answer this question, we created a
research team at the University of Sheeld
composed of sta and students. Working
together, we coded over 2,500 Facebook
adverts placed by national political party
accounts, party leaders and ‘satellite
campaign’ groups – which are non-party
groups promoting particular electoral
outcomes – during the 2019 General
We Coded 2,500 UK
General Election
Adverts – Here’s What
We Learned
Online campaigning is expected to be a major feature of the next
British general election. Ahead of that vote, Isaac Silver, Ren
Thompson, William Bruce, James Brown, Clover Hamilton and Kate
Dommett report the main takeaways from their analysis of more than
2,500 online political adverts placed during the 2019 General Election.
Election campaign. Each advert was coded
by two researchers using a new framework
we developed, that sought to identify the
type of persuasion strategy being used in
each advert. Specically, we were looking
to see whether ads focused on outcomes,
used evidence, referenced reputation, were
aimed at particular communities, contained
targeting data, or used another persuasive
strategy. Whilst we’re currently writing up
our ndings of this project, in this article,
we reect on what we learned about
election adverts from this coding activity.
Highlighting ten key takeaways, we consider
whether current online advertising practices
raise concerns and then look ahead to
the next general election to pose three
questions for future research.
Ten key takeaways
Much of the narrative around online political
advertising has been incredibly negative.
Whether highlighting concerns about
divisive and misleading microtargeting,
foreign interference or misinformation,
online political advertising is often viewed
in a negative light. Yet, having reviewed
hundreds of ads, we found uneven evidence
to support these concerns.
1. Targeting was less specific than
expected
Much has been written about the rise of
targeted political advertising, and there
has been specific concern about the
potential for campaigners to target people
based on their interests or demographic
traits in ways that may be manipulative
(Zuiderveen Borgesius et al., 2018).
Yet within our dataset we found that
visible forms of targeting focused almost
exclusively on location, with references
to a specific constituency or candidate.
On occasion, we did see some evidence
of group-based targeting, with ads using
photos of particular target audiences
(such as young people for Labour and
Political Insight June 2023.indd 24Political Insight June 2023.indd 2418/05/2023 14:5818/05/2023 14:58
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