Is Social Media a Threat to Democracy? ISSUES: Focusing on Six Key Risks Issue Five: Manipulation, micro-targeting, and behavior change mechanisms built into the structure of social media In parallel, a Berkman Klein Center study found that (retweets, likes, comments) and the underlying in recent years, a sustained campaign from Breitbart algorithms allow campaigns to adapt strategies and News has led to the “right-shifting” of American public messaging in real time. For instance, the Trump discourse and expectations; a timely issue, given campaign was measuring responses to 40–50,000 that the expansion of Breitbart into Europe is already different variants of ads every day, then adapting and creating similar ripples.35 Even more, as other research, evolving their messaging based on that feedback. And supported partially by The Omidyar Group, suggests, unlike TV and print, where political ads are declared, voter manipulation in order to create and maintain online political messaging can be more amorphous, often inequality in political access and involvement is a appearing more like news reporting or user messaging. distinct strategic goal of such advertising: “digital Only recently, The New York Times reported on Facebook’s advertising limits algorithmic opportunity to access and disclosure that “it had identified more than $100,000 acquire political information. Voters are strategically worth of divisive ads on hot-button issues purchased by defined, and information inequality is created between a shadowy Russian company linked to the Kremlin. Most the arbitrarily defined ‘strategically important’ and of the 3,000 ads did not refer to particular candidates ‘strategically unimportant.’ Discriminately defined by but instead focused on divisive social issues such as campaigns, different voters receive different information, race, gay rights, gun control, and immigration…The ads, thereby engaging differently in politics.”36 which ran between June 2015 and May 2017, were linked Social media platforms have become a vastly preferred to some 470 fake accounts and pages the company said channel for digital advertising spend; this is even more so it had shut down.” the case for mobile advertising.37 In turn, this has further As Tim Wu notes in an Op-Ed on the issue: “Perhaps the separated publisher and journalist, cannibalized the greatest problem for a democracy is that companies like main revenue sources of traditional news organizations, Facebook and Twitter lack a serious financial incentive and depleted their ability to produce quality news, to do anything about matters of public concern, like the hold the powerful to account, or to be gatekeepers of millions of fake users who are corrupting the democratic the quality and terms of discourse. As a result, the process.”34 monetization of our attention is undermining journalism, which is traditionally a contributor to accountability and, ultimately, democracy. Tim Wu, Please Prove You’re Not a Robot, The New York Times, Published July 15, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/15/opinion/sunday/ please-prove-youre-not-a-robot.html. 35 Interview with David Schraven, Correctiv (Germany), where his group has documented the dis-information campaign that Breitbart and partners are undertaking, focusing on white supremacy, antiimmigration and anti-EU sentiment; and Berkman Klein Center, “Partisan Right-Wing Websites Shaped Mainstream Press Coverage Before 2016 Election, Berkman Klein Study Finds,” Published August 16, 2017, https://cyber.harvard.edu/node/99982. 34 © Copyright The Omidyar Group 2017. All rights reserved. Kim, Y. 2017, Algorithmic Opportunity: Digital Advertising and Inequality in Political Involvement. The Forum, 14(4), pp. 471-484. Retrieved 12 Sep. 2017, from doi:10.1515/for-2016-0034. Also, see http://www. eyeonelections.com/. 37 Google and Facebook accounted for 75% of all new online ad spending in 2015. In the US, $0.85 of every new dollar spent on digital went to the two companies in the first quarter of 2016. Matthew Garrahan, Advertising: Facebook and Google build a duopoly, Financial Times, Published June 23, 2016, https://www.ft.com/ content/6c6b74a4-3920-11e6-9a05-82a9b15a8ee7. 36 PAGE 12