digital manipulation

There has been some brilliant investigative journalism by Carole Cadwallader the Guardian Journalist in terms of this theme. There is very strong evidence that an alliance of American and UK business people worked together to spend foreign cash on influencing the EU referendum. In may senses the stakes are not so high now they have prevailed so this story is a bit “after the fact” it does point however to the manipulative forces at play for your vote. Watch out for fake news – or even better tune in to “More or Less” on Radio 4 if you fancy some good old fashioned fact based balance as a garnish for the post truth dish politics now usually serves up for us. This story tells us:

Political parties are facing an investigation into whether they are breaking the law targeting voters with highly personalised adverts on Facebook.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has launched a formal investigation into the political use of private data amid concerns over allegations involving an analytics firm linked to a Brexit campaign.

In March, pro-Remain Labour MP Stephen Kinnock called on the Electoral Commission to investigate allegations that Leave.EU had not declared the role of the firm, Cambridge Analytica (CA), in its campaign.

The ICO then announced that it was conducting an assessment of the data protection risks arising from the use of data analytics for political purposes.

Elizabeth Denham, the UK Information Commissioner, said she wanted the new probe to “shine the light” on how voters’ data is used during political campaigns.

When asked on BBC Radio 4 how worried people should be about their Facebook posts being used to map online activity for political purposes, she said: “We think that there are a lot of question marks out there.