Campaign meddlingOnline campaigning poses a risk to democracy: Experts

A working group set up by the London School of Economics said that there is a need for an in-depth, independent, research driven, evidence-based review of the role of social media in political campaigning. Research and opinion from universities around the world has for some time now been raising questions about the long-term impact of social media on elections. The founder of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, has raised similar concerns, and leaders from professional journalism and Parliament have also raised alarms.

The LSE says that the Media Policy Project publishes a policy brief which sets out some of the main concerns raised by the shift of political campaigning online, and makes the case for an independent review. The working groups notes that this is not smoking-gun evidence of a crisis in democratic communication, but it is certainly much more than sufficient to confirm that the rapid changes in campaign practices require an urgent review of the rules and regulations that apply to them.

“There is a real danger that public trust in the democratic process will be lost. There is real potential for foreign influence. We have now the ability to manipulate public opinion on a level we have never seen before. And the current framework is weak and helpless,” said Damian Tambini, the brief’s lead author.

Martin Moore, director of the Centre for the Study of Media, Communication and Power, at King’s College London, told the Guardian that the machinery of campaigning had changed so rapidly, the law has had no chance to catch up. “The first election where digital made a difference was in 2008. And now it’s where pretty much all the spending is. It has been a shift that has happened in less than 10 years. What we’re seeing is exactly the same sort of disruption that we’ve seen in news and music and other industries.

“That is exactly what is happening in politics. The problem is that if you disrupt politics, you are also disrupting the democratic process and you are creating a very dangerous or volatile situation.”

In the United Kingdom, a review should be independent of government, and of Parliament, and separate from the political parties. It should focus both on short-term issues with the regulatory framework (spending controls miss out increasingly important costs such as database costs outside the regulatory period, and “level playing field” broadcast rules are ineffective as advertising and attention shift online); and longer term issues such as the pernicious impact of targeted campaigning, which exacerbates dog whistle, filter bubble politics, and undermine the very idea of a democratic mandate based on open, public deliberation.

“As we have seen with recent events in the United States, the scale of recent changes in campaigning raise the prospect of foreign intervention in domestic politics, and the opaque exercise of power by private companies,” the working groups says. “Since the passing of the Illegal and Corrupt Practices Act of 1883, the United Kingdom has acted to balance and control threats to the legitimate democratic order. It is time to act again.”

— Read more in Damian Tambini et al., The New Political Campaigning, Media Policy Brief 19 (London School of Economics, March 2017)