Google, Meta and Twitter must publish the expenses of the parties on social media during the election campaign
The speech by Andrea Boscaro, partner of The Vortex, on the proposal of Professor Marco Mayer to make advertising investments available on social media by candidates and parties in these weeks of electoral campaign
The proposal, put forward on Startmag by Professor Marco Mayer, to make advertising investments on social media available by candidates and parties in these weeks of the electoral campaign is so necessary that it deserves to be disseminated and deepened.
It is so necessary that the European Commission itself, in a reform proposal put forward last November 25 in anticipation of the upcoming elections to the European Parliament, intended to give greater transparency so that not only digital platforms, but also political actors and media centers, account for the investments made in social and digital advertising campaigns and indicate the profiling criteria adopted at the same time, recommending to limit, in this activity, the use of artificial intelligence as a way to reduce human control in the choices of targeting the recipients of the messages advertising.
It is also a proposal that deserves to be studied in depth because Professor Mayer includes platforms that today do not offer tools such as the Ads Library that Meta was called upon to introduce following the Cambridge Analytica scandal and which allows, for social and political, to observe the planning and advertising investments by candidates, movements and parties.
The availability of such a punctual interface must not, however, hide the difficulties in making use of it: the advertising profiles monitored are in fact over 52,000 in Italy alone and the granularity of the investment centers (profiles of national parties, individual candidates, support, of local offices …) does not make it easy to have a complete picture of planned investments.
This difficulty adds to the opacity that advertising campaigns on social media can enjoy when they make use of automated systems: the micro-targeting deriving from the use of demographic and personal data and from the combination of interests and behaviors can only be achieved thanks to automation techniques and machine learning that are beyond the control possible with interfaces such as the Ads Library.
To make things simpler perhaps TikTok contributes which, by a choice of its own, has given up on collecting political advertising although it is clear to everyone how, in recent years, it has been able to give voice to forms of political activism and support the mobilization of militants and members to alternative cultures.
If until a few months ago, the only Italian political leader to be present was Matteo Salvini, for some months also Giuseppe Conte has been active on the platform, although aware of the least possible control of the videos published due to the latter being able to be commented on. by detractors with Duets and Stitch, two types of videos that, on TikTok, can mimic the messages originally launched.
The controversy that in recent days has followed the remarks made by Elodie to the political program of Giorgia Meloni then indicates how much the electoral campaign on social media must be followed not only on the profiles of the candidates, but also by observing the role played this summer by celebrities and influencers .
The electoral campaign has just begun and, due to its brevity and the distribution of the population away from the cities for the summer period, it will undoubtedly make it even more present on social media: greater transparency in their use could therefore be a further way to make it participatory and aware.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/google-meta-e-twitter-devono-pubblicare-le-spese-dei-partiti-sui-social-in-campagna-elettorale/ on Sat, 30 Jul 2022 05:54:31 +0000.