The Promises and Negative Implications of Micro-targeting and Big Data Analytics

Micro-Targeting and the Use of Big Data
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Micro-Targeting and the Use of Big Data
Introduction
Political parties and candidates recognize the need for personalized communication to persuade voters in their favor. The emergence of technologies that allow for the profiling of target voters has allowed political parties and candidates to push personalized messages to individual voters. Digital technology has altered how individuals access information, communicate, collaborate, and participate in political processes (Milakovich, 2010). Political parties and candidates have recognized the importance of an online presence and social media. The use of data and social media has become embedded in the political area. Data has become an essential tool in the politician’s electoral kit, and campaigners are increasingly developing mechanisms to take advantage of the development. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp have allowed individuals who share common political interests to unite and mobilize for support. The Internet has become a powerful catalyst for political participation since it allows individuals to participate in small ways towards more significant movements (Neudert & Marchal, 2019). Among other approaches, political campaigns use micro-targeting and big data to influence the outcomes of an election. While micro-targeting and big data are effective in contemporary political public relations and campaigners, they raise serious issues adversely affecting the democratic process.
Big Data and Micro-targeting
Big data refers to large data sets that can be analyzed computationally to bring out patterns and associations that can reveal human behavior and interactions. The data is complex and impossible to process using the traditional approaches. However, information can be mined from big data to assist in making critical decisions. Modern campaigns have databases that have information about the voters. The data is used to inform strategy and guide in making tactical decisions that can influence voters in particular desirable decisions. Parties are increasingly using big data on voters and aggregating it into datasets that can be used to drive campaigns. Campaign data analysts use the data to develop models that create individual-level predictions about how voters are likely to behave and support particular outcomes (Nickerson & Rogers, 2014). The analysis of the big data and the subsequent targeting of individual voters has facilitated the idea of micro-targeting.
Micro-targeting aims to influence voters by directly transmitting stimuli created from an individual’s preferences and characteristics. The data can be collected manually or through data mining. Social media has been vital in facilitating micro-targeting. For instance, when users sign up for Facebook, they supply the social network with basic biodata like name, gender, and date of birth. Facebook associates the data provided with a picture and common data about the individual like religion, residence, and political views (Barbu, 2014). The individual parts work towards creating a large targeting database. Setting up a profile with a social network like Facebook allows th...