IGF 2021 WS #165
Impacts of microtargeting: how to save the democratic whole?

Description:

Communication, discussion and debate nowadays increasingly take place online. It is even more so in the midst of a pandemic that has halted usual gatherings and has reduced the chances to meet in order to compare views on a wide array of topics. The public opinion, whose existence is reckoned as the backbone of a fully-working modern democracy, is extremely dependent on the content and discussions that are sparked from posts onto social networking platforms, whose users have an enhanced chance of becoming agenda-setters with an incomparable audience to other means of communication. Monitoring users’ behaviors through the collection and processing of their data has quickly gained attractiveness in various fields and became appealing also for modern political campaigns to the extent that they are moving to a data driven paradigm which enables them to tailor, with an algorithmic precision, micro-targeted messages to individual voters. Targeting voters online relies on a preliminary process of collecting a huge amount of data in light of which users(-voters) are divided into segments through the processing of such data and the extraction of information. Through sophisticated algorithms, it is possible to tailor accurate profiles to sell to political parties, which can efficiently create customized contents and communicate them with the most effective campaign method. The enormous proliferation of predictive tools to classify users and the extent to which such techniques are used for political purposes pose numerous questions not only on individual rights, but also on the integrity of the democratic process as a whole, also in light of the tight link and dependance of its functioning from any specific electoral system. The scope of this phenomenon requires a serious rethinking also of collateral aspects such as the voter analytic strategies’ role in modern elections, the democratic responsibilities of private actors, the transparency of political advertising, the spread of disinformation and its hetero-directed allocation. Moreover, the fact that hosting providers are private enterprises intrinsically undermines the authenticity of the discussions taking place, as the content shown to each user depends on the algorithm underlying the platform. The content moderation policies adopted by the intermediaries are not the result of deliberation following public debate, thereby amplifying the phenomena of disinformation and polarization through the exclusion of contents that are not in line with the user’s preferences. Political micro-targeting allows campaigns to reach those segments of the electorate that habitually use social media to the extent that the phenomenon can also positively address the problem of the disaffection of citizens from politics, resulting in an increase of voter turnout or in strengthening the public discourse. The widespread impact of such practice requires the possibility to collect a huge amount of data and its political exploitation are elements with which not only governments, but also civil society, private actors and informational players will increasingly have to confront.
The workshop avails of the expertise developed by some members of the Global Digital Human Rights Network, whose objective is to explore whether international human rights law is sufficiently detailed to enable governments and private online companies to understand their respective obligations vis-à-vis human rights protection online. The program has published its first working paper in December 2020 (Viral Information: How States and Platforms Deal with Covid-19-related Disinformation: an Exploratory Study of 20 Countries).