Abstract
This chapter considers how advertising platforms like Facebook or companies like Cambridge Analytica leveraged vast amounts of data to produce granulated, psychographic profiles that matched American voters with targeted political messages in the recent Trump elections. In so doing, it begins by examining the relationship between current political practices and the technological changes that have rapidly transformed advertising and marketing industries. It goes on to discuss how processes of datafication should no longer be uniquely understood as economic but also as political to garner influence, raising important questions around the myriad ways in which political parties are now using algorithmic processes to reach potential voters. The chapter concludes by considering the datafied tactics of persuasion or ‘nudge politics’, given the small margins and means by which Trump won.
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Notes
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To see the campaign video following this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyZawynWt2s&feature=youtu.be
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Sticky here is a marketing term that refers to the amount of time a user spends with a piece of content. For more information refer to: Accumulating Affect: Social Networks and their Archives of Feelings (Pybus 2015).
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Pybus, J. (2019). Trump, the First Facebook President: Why Politicians Need Our Data Too. In: Happer, C., Hoskins, A., Merrin, W. (eds) Trump’s Media War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94069-4_14
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