Podcasts about who targets me

Today's guest is Sam Jeffers, cofounder and executive director of Who Targets Me. Jeffers has spent several yearshas spent several years building a suite of capabilities to make political advertising more transparent, including tools for individuals and data and support for academics, researchers and journalists. His organization also advocates for better policy from platforms, regulators and governments. (You can download the Who Targets Me browser extension to contribute your data to the project.)

In the aftermath of the Labour landslide Roger Mosey, former Editorial Directior of BBC News, accuses broadcasters of spending too much time on 'the kind of trivia that alienates voters.' Should journalism do better? We test the thesis with new research from Dominic Wring of Loughborough University outlining the topics journalists covered most, plus Sam Jeffers from media transparency organisation Who Targets Me explains how the parties used social media and Harriet Line from The Daily Mail tells us how she's going to cultivate contacts to report on the new government.Across the channel the French election continues to surprise with the campaign dominated by parties, from left and right, at the farther ends of the political spectrum. Victor Goury-Laffont, Politics Reporter at Politico Europe and Dr Ayala Panievsky from City University explain the challenges for journalism of covering populist campaigns. Also in the programme, we talk to journalist Oz Katerji who arrived at the scene of the missile strike on a children's hospital in Kyiv, stopped reporting and started helping. Guests: Oz Katerji, war correspondent and filmmaker; Roger Mosey, Master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, former Editorial Director, BBC; Dominic Wring, Professor of Political Communication, Loughborough University; Priyanka Raval, Reporter, The Bristol Cable; Dr Ayala Panievsky, Presidential Fellow, City University; Victor Goury-Laffont, Politics Reporter, Politico Europe; Harriet Line, Deputy Political Editor, Daily Mail; Sam Jeffers, Executive Director, Who Targets Me Presenters: Katie Razzall and Ros Atkins Producer: Simon Richardson

Sunak's cringe moments have received laser focus throughout the campaign. But what about messaging he's putting out online? Who are parties targeting, where, and with what information? Jacob Jarvis asks Who Targets Me founder Sam Jeffers about the good, the bad and the ugly in online political ads throughout this campaign cycle. We are sponsored by Indeed. Go to Indeed.com/bunker for £100 sponsored credit. www.patreon.com/bunkercast Written and presented by Podmasters Managing Editor Jacob Jarvis. Produced by Eliza Davis Beard. Audio production by Tom Taylor. Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Art by James Parrett. Music by Kenny Dickinson. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production   www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week we look at Big Tech and its role in a crucial election year around the world. Baroness Martha Lane Fox, who sat on the board of X (formerly Twitter), assesses the platform's changing attitude towards political content. Also in the programme, as the general election campaign heats up in the UK, will TikTok help the candidates reach younger voters? Presenter: Katie Razzall Guests: Shona Ghosh, Senior Editor, Bloomberg; Martha Lane Fox, former board member, Twitter/X; Sean Topham, Co-Founder, Topham Guerin; Timandra Harkness, author of Technology is Not the Problem; Sam Jeffers, Executive Director, Who Targets Me

A week into the election, we explore party control of the media message and the gaffes that happen when things go wrong. We hear live from the Labour battle bus, talk to Boris Johnson's former social media strategist and look at the way the different campaigns are crafting their message on TikTok. Shona Ghosh, Senior Editor, Bloomberg; Martha Lane Fox, former Board Member, Twitter/X; Katy Balls, Political Editor, The Spectator; Sean Topham, Co-Founder, Topham Guerin; Jessica Elgot, Deputy Political Editor, The Guardian; Timandra Harkness, writer and author of Technology is Not the Problem; Sam Jeffers, Executive  Director, Who Targets Me

Hi all, we are back after a week break for Thanksgiving with a new episode! This week, I recorded three more interviews, which, along with the ones I already have in the hopper, will take us through December 28th. After that, I plan on taking a short break - no more than a few weeks - to think about how I can make the podcast better. I've enjoyed putting it together and so appreciate my guests and you, the listener. To that end, I'd love your feedback. If you have a few minutes, please share your thoughts on the podcast here. Ok, on to the show. First, our fun hard tradeoff question:I've got two guests this week to talk all things elections and tech in the United Kingdom.First up is my former colleague and manager at Facebook, Richard Allan. Richard was at the company for over a decade, running the public policy team in Europe and the policy solutions team. He is also a British Lord who spent much time getting the Online Safety Bill passed. Richard also has his own podcast that I highly recommend called Regulate.tech.Next up is Sam Jeffers with Who Targets Me - an organization dedicated to bringing more transparency to political ads online. They also write a great Substack called . In fact, they had a piece recently I highly recommend about how this upcoming UK election will be a digital election unlike anything the country has seen. Enjoy!Please support the curation and analysis I'm doing with this newsletter. As a paid subscriber, you make it possible for me to bring you in-depth analyses of the most pressing issues in tech and politics. Get full access to Anchor Change with Katie Harbath at anchorchange.substack.com/subscribe

Artificial intelligence is already shaping the way we work, consume, and communicate with one another. It's also shaping the way we govern ourselves – or, perhaps more accurately, the way we are governed.While we might imagine ways AI could shape better democratic processes, right now experts are worried about how such technologies can be used to manipulate, divide, suppress, and disinform people. With these concerns in mind, we ask: Is AI a threat to democracy?On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Sam Jeffers, executive director of Who Targets Me, and Karim Bardeesy, executive director of The Dais at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Artificial intelligence is already shaping the way we work, consume, and communicate with one another. It's also shaping the way we govern ourselves – or, perhaps more accurately, the way we are governed.While we might imagine ways AI could shape better democratic processes, right now experts are worried about how such technologies can be used to manipulate, divide, suppress, and disinform people. With these concerns in mind, we ask: Is AI a threat to democracy?On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Sam Jeffers, executive director of Who Targets Me, and Karim Bardeesy, executive director of The Dais at Toronto Metropolitan University.

In episode 6 of Series 7 of The Rights Track, we're joined by Susie Alegre, an international human rights lawyer and associate at Doughty Street Chambers specialising in digital rights. Susie's work focuses in particular on the impact of technology and AI on the rights to freedom of thought and opinion. Her recently published book - Freedom to Think: The Long Struggle to Liberate Our Minds – explores how the powerful have always sought to influence how we think and what we buy. And today we are asking her how do we liberate our minds in a modern digital world?    Transcript Todd Landman  0:01  Welcome to the Rights Track podcast which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. In series seven, we're discussing human rights in a digital world. I'm Todd Landman, in the sixth episode of the series, I'm delighted to be joined by Susie Alegre. Susie is the international human rights lawyer and associate the Doughty Street Chambers specialising in digital rights, in particular the impact of technology and artificial intelligence on the rights to freedom of thought and opinion. Her recently published book - Freedom to Think; The Long Struggle to Liberate our Minds - explores how the powerful have always sought to influence how we think and what we buy. And today we're asking her, how do we liberate our minds in a modern digital world? So Susie it's great to have you on this episode of the Rights Track. Welcome. Susie Alegre  0:47  Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here. Todd Landman  0:49  So I love the book - Freedom to Think - I've read it cover to cover. In fact, I read it probably in two days, because it's such a compelling read. And I guess my first question for you is, why is the freedom to think broadly understood belief, expression, speech, religion, thought, why is all of that so critical to us as human beings? Susie Alegre  1:10  I think the way that I've looked at it in the book is really dividing those elements up a little bit. So what I focused on in the book is freedom of thought and opinion and what goes on inside our heads, as opposed to the more traditional discussions that we have around freedom of speech. And one of the reasons for that is that while freedom of speech has consequences and responsibilities, and freedom of speech can be limited, that freedom in our inner worlds to think whatever we like to practice our thoughts and opinions and decide whether or not there's something we should share, is what allows us to really develop and be human. And the right to freedom of thought and opinion, along with belief and conscience, insofar as we practice that inside our heads is something that's protected absolutely in international human rights law, which I think reflects its importance. And when you consider other absolute rights and human rights law, like the prohibition on torture, or the prohibition on slavery, the right to freedom of thought inside your head alongside those other rights, really gets to the heart of human dignity, and what it means for us to be humans. Todd Landman  2:24  Yes and so in protecting those rights, we are giving people agency because I was caught really captured by one thing you just said there about, we choose what we want to share. So a lot of us can have a million thoughts a second, but we don't share all of them. Although in the current era, it seems that people are sharing pretty much everything that they're thinking. But we'll get to that in a minute. I'm just curious about this idea of agency that, you know, you choose what to share, you also choose what not to share. And that element of choice is fundamental to being human. Susie Alegre  2:53  Absolutely. And what the right to freedom of thought, well certainly a key element is right to freedom of thought and freedom of opinion, is what's called freedom in the forum internal that's inside, you know, in our inner lives, it's not what we then choose to do, or say in the outer world. And having that inner space, it's really important for us to be able to develop who we are, you know, I'm sure all of us have had thoughts that we wouldn't particularly like to be recorded. And I don't know if you've seen the recent drama Upload, which. Todd Landman  3:28  I have not. Susie Alegre  3:29  Well it's worth a look, because I was watching one of the episodes where it was about people being unable effectively to shut off their thoughts or their thoughts were being live streamed if you like. And I mean, you can only imagine the horror of that, you know, that was a comedy. A similar story played out in a short story by Philip K. Dick, The Hood Maker, which was a situation where you had people who were able to read other people's thoughts, and the only way that you could protect yourself from this mind reading was to wear a hood. And so protecting your thoughts from mind reading was really seen as an act of rebellion and effectively made unlawful and that I think shows just how important this space is. It is if you like the absolute core of privacy. So privacy becomes like a gateway right to that central core of who we are, and how we decide who we're going to be. Todd Landman  4:27  I like this idea of a gateway right - that's really cool. Now, in the book, you have this really the first part is quite a deep dive into history. I mean, you go right back to Socrates, you worked your way through Galileo, you work your way through people that challenge the status quo, through freedom of thought, whether it was scientific practice, or religious belief or any kind of thought, but what are some of the high points of this history and shall we say the analogue attempts to control people's thoughts? Susie Alegre  4:53  Yeah, as you say, I looked right back and and Socrates is if you like, a classic example of a martyr for freedom of thought. One of the interesting things as well about Socrates is that we don't have anything written down by Socrates, because Socrates was himself very suspicious of the written word and what that did for humans ability to debate. But what he did do was absolutely question the status quo. And he delighted in creating arguments that would undermine Greek democracy at the time. But one of the reasons why we all know the name of Socrates and remember, Socrates, is because Socrates was effectively judged by his peers, and forced to take his own life by Hemlock because of his scurrilous ideas, and his attempts to twist the minds of young Athenians and to question the gods. So while Socrates might be sort of seen as an example of a champion of freedom of thought and freedom of speech, it was very clear that at that time in history, you didn't really have freedom of speech, because it ultimately landed up with a death sentence. Some of the other areas I looked at were people like Galileo and questioning whether the sun and the universe travelled around the Earth or the other way around, and that really landed him in house arrest. So really, again, questioning the status quo of the church, and certainly religions through the centuries have been one of the prime movers in curtailing freedom of thought and freedom of religion, if you'd like. Todd Landman  6:32  Yeah, in my world, the Galileo story is a kind of clash between observational data and belief. Susie Alegre  6:38  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. But again, it sounds like one of those arguments of you know, well, you can have your own opinion and every opinion is sort of questions, but in another century, and in that century, you'll end up under house arrest, when you challenge the beliefs of the status quo and of the powers that be. Todd Landman  6:56  Yes, we see that being played out today, in the scepticism around science, whether one takes an extreme view about for example, being a flat earther. Or if there's doubt about scientific discovery, scientific development, the way in which countries respond to the COVID crisis, the hesitancy around vaccines, masks mandates, that kind of general scepticism around science, is also one where sure, there's freedom of thought, belief and opinion. But then there's also tested peer reviewed scientific evidence for the best thing we think we can possibly do under times of great uncertainty. Susie Alegre  7:31  Absolutely. And that area is a prime area where you see the difference between freedom of thought and opinion and freedom of speech and expression. So where you have sort of COVID conspiracy theories, if you like spreading through social media or spreading really proven false information that can harm people. You know, there is then a legitimate reason to restrict that expression and the spread of that expression, to protect public health. Doesn't mean that people can't still think those things. But there really have to be limitations on how those expressions are spread, when they are absolutely damaging to public health or to other people's rights. Todd Landman  8:18  Yes, exactly. And I don't think you covered this in the book. But I just want to push you a little bit. You mentioned about Socrates written word not being written down. But with the invention of the printing press historically, how had that changed freedom, expression, thought, belief? What's the role of that technological advance in your understanding of the history of this idea? Susie Alegre  8:39  Well, the printing press just really accelerated the way that information could be shared, it effectively accelerated the impact of expression, if you'd like. And interestingly, actually, I was asked recently, to compare regulation of the printing press and of printing around that time and how long it took to get serious regulation as compared to trying to regulate the internet today. And I said, rather flippantly, well, people were arrested, and books were burned. That was how regulation worked initially in response to the massive impact of the printing press. And while I was being flippant when I thought about it afterwards, well actually, that is how they tried to regulate the printing press. And one of the reasons I looked back at the past of freedom of thought in the ways that we didn't really have freedom of thought historically. To me, that was important because it showed what a sea change, having human rights law has been for us as human beings. So you know, people may complain about cancel culture, but certainly in the UK cancel culture very rarely involves actually being put in prison. Certainly it doesn't involve being told to drink hemlock or certainly not being obliged to drink hemlock. Human rights have really put the brakes on the ability of the powers that be to control us. But they've also put an obligation to protect us from each other. Todd Landman  10:13  And there's a certain duality then because if I think about what you just said, the powers that be, let's translate that into the rise of the modern state, as it were. And you draw on reading some, you know, quite regularly through the book you draw on Orwell's 1984. You draw on Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism you draw on Huxley's Brave New World. So why did you draw on those sources? It seems to be you're alluding to the power of the state, the power of control, all those sorts of aspects. And yet, in order for human rights to work, we still need the power of the state. So there's two sides of the coin problem that we face in this quest to regulation. Susie Alegre  10:52  Absolutely. And drawing on those sources, in particular, in particular, Orwell and Huxley. I mean, perhaps because I'm a bit of a masochist, I spent the start of lockdown reading 1984. And just marvelling at how prescient it was, and how accurately it portrayed the developments of technology in our life. The Speak Write machine, the way that Winston Smith is employed to rewrite history, if you like, sort of creating in real time, disinformation in 1984, was somehow a real surprise to me having not read it since 1984, was just how accurately prescient it was. And similarly, reading Brave New World and the consumerism and the use of distraction as a means of social control, rather than the oppressive jackboot that you see in 1984. And seeing the ways that potentially commercial enterprises and a light touch can be used to have an equally corrosive and problematic effects on our societies. So the reflections of the images of Huxley and Orwell in particular was so stark that I felt that I had to use them because it seemed that rather than taking those as a warning from the 20th century, we've taken them as a template for the development of technology and consumerism in our lives. Todd Landman  12:23  So I suppose that really allows me now to segue nicely into your concerns over the digital world and how this digital world relates to human rights. And I guess my entry point is this famous line you have in the book where you say, you know, I told my daughter, she can't have Alexa. And she asked me why. And I said, you can't have an Alexa because it steals your dreams, and sells them to other people. Talk me through that. Talk me through your fears and worries around Alexa and what that means for the broader digital problem that we face. Susie Alegre  12:52  Yeah, Alexa is certainly a case in point. And as I'm sure anyone else with children has had the experience, your child comes home and their friends have got whatever technology it is, in this case, Alexa, and I know several people, several families where the kids do have Alexa in their bedroom. So you will always get these arguments as well sounds so has it so it must be great. For me the idea of Alexa the idea of actively choosing to bring a listening device into your home, that is constantly listening to what is going on in your home and sharing that with you have no idea who using that information in ways that you have no real idea how that's going to land up is something so astonishing. You know, having spent years working on human rights and counterterrorism, and also most recently, working in oversight on interception of communications, and how sort of allergic people or if you like, and quite rightly, to state intrusions to the idea that the state might be bugging your home, to then actually pay money and to let a private actor come in and listen to everything that's going on in your home for profit, just to me seems really astonishing. And yet somehow, it's become so normalised that as I said, I know lots of people who do have Alexa and are delighted to have Alexa. Plenty of people in the lockdowns suddenly sending around videos from their Ring cameras outside their doors, but this idea of constant control constant monitoring of our lives for someone else's profit. To me seems like something that is an really fundamental shift and something that we should all be really concerned about. Todd Landman  14:51  Now you're in addition to the Alexa example you're also very concerned about, shall we say the unregulated or the unleashing of and I will use the generic term algorithms in the digital world? So why are these algorithms problematic? From your perspective? What do they do? How do they affect people? Or is it a way that they're affecting people? And people don't even know? And is it that ignorance of the effect that concerns you? Or is it just the development of algorithms in the first place that concerns you? Susie Alegre  15:20  Now, I mean, algorithms are digital tools, if you like. So it's not the algorithm itself. There are two things really well, there are many. But let's start with two. One is the ability to understand why an algorithm is operating in the way it's operating. So an algorithm is effectively told to take information and translate that information into a conclusion or into an action, but understanding exactly what information is taken, how that information is being weighted, and then how a decision if you like, as being taken and what impact that decision will have, is often not very clear. And so where an algorithm based on huge amounts of data, for example, is being used to decide whether or not you might be fraudulently requesting benefits, for example, in the benefits system, that raises really serious concerns, because the outcome of not getting benefits or the outcome of being flagged as a fraud risk, has a really, really seriously detrimental impact on an individual life. Todd Landman  16:29  Yes. And you also give examples of credit rating. So if typically, somebody wants to get a mortgage in the UK, the mortgage company will say, well, we're gonna run a credit check on you. And they might go to one of the big data providers, that gives you a score. And that score is a function of how many credit cards you have any loans, you might have had any late payments you might have had on a loan or a mortgage in the past. And in the absence of a particular number. The company may reserve the right to say, you can't have a mortgage and I think you give the personal examples of your own struggles setting up a bank account after having lived abroad. Susie Alegre  17:03  Yeah. Todd Landman  17:04  Talk us through some of that. Susie Alegre  17:05  Yeah, absolutely. So as you say, I talk a bit in the book about returning from Uganda, where ironically, I've been working as a diplomat for European Union on anti-corruption. And I came back to the UK to work as an ombudsman in the Financial Ombudsman Service. But when I applied for a bank account, I was suddenly told that I couldn't have the bank account. Because the computer said no, effectively. The computer had clearly decided that because I was coming from Uganda or whatever other information had been weighed up against me, I was too much of a risk to take. The fact that I had been fully vetted as an ombudsman, and that the money that would be going through that bank account was going to be salary from the Financial Ombudsman Service was not enough to outweigh whatever it is the algorithm had decided against me. Eventually, I was able to open an account a few months later. But one of the interesting things then working as an ombudsman was that I did come across cases where people had had their credit score downgraded because the computer said so and where the business was unable to explain why that had happened. I mean, from an ombudsman perspective, I was in a position to decide what's fair and reasonable in all circumstances of a case. In my view, it's very difficult to say that a decision is fair and reasonable if you don't know how that decision has been reached. But those kinds of decisions are being made about all of us all the time, every day in different contexts. And it's deeply concerning that we're not often able to know exactly why a decision has been taken. And in many cases, we may find it quite difficult to even challenge those decisions or know who to complain to.  Todd Landman  17:14  Yeah and this gets back to core legal principles of fairness, of justice, of transparency of process and accountability of decision making. And yet all of that is being compromised by, let's say, an algorithm, or as you say, in the book, the computer says no. Susie Alegre  18:49 Completely and I think one of the key things to bear in mind that even the drafters have the right to freedom of thought and opinion in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, discuss the fact that inferences about what you're thinking or what your opinions are about, can be a violation of the right even if they're incorrect. So when you find the algorithm, making inferences about how risky a person you are, whether or not the algorithm is right, it may still be violating your right to keep your thoughts and opinions to yourself. You know, you should only be judged on what you do and what you say, not on what somebody infers about what's going on in your inner life. Todd Landman  19:50  Not on what you might be thinking. Susie Alegre  19:52  Exactly. Absolutely. Absolutely. Todd Landman  19:54  Right now, we've had a couple of guests on previous episodes that I would put broadly speaking in the camp of the 'data for good' camp. And when I read your book, I feel like I'm gonna broadly put you in the camp of 'data for bad'. And that might be an unfair judgement. But is there data for good here? I mean, because, you know, you cite the sort of surveillance capitalism literature, you have some, you know, endorsements from authors in that tradition. But if I were to push you, is there a data for good story that could be told nevertheless? Susie Alegre  20:23  I think there might be in public data. So for example, in the US, and I don't know if they are included in your guests, but there's data for black lives. And they've done really interesting work from public data, you know, flagging where there are issues of racial and systemic injustice. So that kind of work, I think, is very important. And there is a distinction between public data and private data, although how you draw that distinction is a really complicated question. But in terms of our personal data, one of the things that I think is important in looking at how to address these issues, is about setting the lines for the things that you can never do. And what I hope is that if you set down some barriers, some very, very clear lines of what can never ever be done with data. Then you will find technology, particularly technology related to data, and that includes the use of AI interpreting and working with data will develop in a different direction, because at the moment, the money is in extracting as much personal information as you can out of every single one of us and selling them. Todd Landman  21:40  And the degree of the extraction of that information is both witting and unwitting. So you also make the point in the book, if somebody signs up for a Facebook account, they just hit agree to the terms and conditions. But actually the time it takes to read the terms and conditions could be two or three days to get through to the fine print. And so people are just saying yes, because they want this particular account with not actually knowing the degree to which the sharing their personal information. Is that correct? Susie Alegre  22:06  Absolutely. And the other problem was the terms and conditions is that if you don't like them, what exactly you're going to do about it? Particularly if you're looking at terms and conditions to be able to access banking or access the National Health Service. If you don't like the terms and conditions, how exactly are you going to push back. But that point that you've made as well about the consent button, there's also an issue around what are called dark patterns. So the way that technology is designed, and that our online experience is designed to nudge us in certain directions. So if you're asked to agree the terms and conditions, the easiest thing is to hit the big green button that says I consent. Again, we see it with cookies, you know, often you've got a simple option where you hit I consent, or there's a complicated option, where you can manage your cookie settings and go through a couple of different layers in order to decide how much you want to be tracked online. And so that is clearly pushing you in the direction in time poor life experience, to hit the easiest option and just consent. Todd Landman  23:16  I feel that everybody you know, I read through Flipboard, which is a way of aggregating news sources from around the world by topic. And I sort of follow politics and law and international events, music and various other things. But every news story open up because of GDPR I get a pop up screen that says accept cookies, manage cookies. And I always say accept because I want to read the story. But what I'm actually doing is telling the world I've read this story, is that right? Susie Alegre  23:43  Yeah, absolutely. The cookies question as well as one where, actually, why should we be being tracked in all of our activities? All of our interests? And as you say, you know, telling the world that you've read this article is partly telling the world what you're interested in and what you're thinking about, not just that you've read this article in an abstract sense, you know, it's telling the world about your interests. One of the things that is also disturbing that people often don't realise is that it's not just what you read. It's even things that you may hover over and not click on that are equally being tracked. And it's not just on the page where you're reading the article. It's about being tracked all around your online activity being tracked with your phone being tracked, where you are not just what you're looking at on the phone. It's so granular, the information that's being taken, that I think very few of us realise it and even if you do realise that as individuals, we can't really stop it. Todd Landman  24:52  And I think for that reason I take a little bit of comfort because I wasn't targeted by Cambridge Analytica. I probably played some of the games on Facebook, you know the personality test stuff, but I never got ads as far as I was concerned that were being, you know, foisted upon me by the Cambridge Analytica approach. I use that as, let's say, a metaphor. But I know that there was micro-targeting based on certain profiles, because there was an attempt to leverage voters who had never voted before, or voters who were predisposed to in particular vote to vote for certain things. But again, it's that unwitting sort of profile that you build by the things that you hover over or the things that you'd like or the things that you at least read and accept that button on cookies. And of course, we now know that that microtargeting actually might have had a, you know, a significant impact on the way in which people viewed particular public policy issues. Susie Alegre  25:41  Completely, and I mean, I don't know whether I was or was not targeted by Cambridge Analytica or similar, around that time around 2016/2017. I don't know if you've come across a Who Targets Me, which is a plugin that you can put onto your browser to find out particularly around election times, who is targeting you. And I have to say that when I very briefly joined a political party for a couple of months, I signed off my membership after a couple of months, because I discovered that they were targeting me and people in my household through this, who targets me plugin. So even though theoretically, as a member, I was already going to vote for them. But that information was being used to pollute my online environment, as far as I'm concerned, which was a bit of an own goal, I imagine for them. Todd Landman  26:32  So that really does bring us to the question of what is to be done. So you know, I was waiting in the book for sort of what's the regulatory answer, and you do give some good practical suggestions on a way forward, because there is this challenge, particularly where we need services, you know, we do need mortgages, we need access to health care, we need public information, we need all the benefits that come from the digital world. But at the same time, we need to protect ourselves against the harms that digital world can bring to us. So what are the sort of three or four major things that need to happen to maybe mitigate against the worst forms of what you're worried about in the book? Susie Alegre  27:10  Well, one of the difficulties in the book was coming up with those things, if you like, what are the key things that we need to stop, and particularly in an atmosphere where we are seeing regulation happening, rapidly trying to play catch up, we've just seen the Digital Services Act in the European Union being agreed, we have the Online Safety Bill on the table in the UK, in Chile, we've seen in the last year legislation around neuro rights being introduced. And so it's a very fast paced environment. So trying to come up with suggestions that go to the heart of it while recognising the complexity and also recognising that it's in a huge state of flux. I wanted to really highlight the things that I think are the core of how we've got here and the core, very obvious things that we should not be doing. The first one of those is surveillance advertising. And that is advertising that is based on information, granular information, like we've been talking about about our inner lives, including how we're feeling potentially at any single moment in order to decide what images what messages we should be delivered. And whether those are political messages, whether that is commercial messages, whether it's just trying to drag us into gambling, when we're having a bad moment online. All of those kinds of things are part of this surveillance advertising ecosystem. And while surveillance advertising isn't the whole problem, I think that surveillance advertising is the oil that is driving this machine forward. If you don't have surveillance advertising, there isn't so much money in gathering all of this information about us. Because that information is valuable because it can sell us stuff, whether it's selling us a political candidate, or whether it's selling us a particular pair of socks tomorrow. And so surveillance advertising, I think is the key. And I think banning surveillance advertising would be the single most effective way to start change. Another thing that I think could make a real sea change in the way tech develops is recommender algorithms. And again, the things that are being recommended to us the way that we receive our information, whether that is on Netflix, whether that is on new services, potentially, very personalised recommendations of information are a way of distorting how we think and how we see the world based on information about our emotional states information about our psychological vulnerabilities, a whole raft of things that could lead to that. That I think is a real vehicle for social control. And so you may want occasionally, or even always, to have somebody suggesting what you should watch, when you're feeling tired, you don't want to make a decision yourself and you're happy to just be given whatever it is. But recommender algorithms and that kind of personalization of information feeds should never ever be the default. At the moment for most of us that is the situation. When we open up our laptops. When we open up social media, when we look at our phones, we're being given a curated personalised experience without necessarily realising it. So addressing that, and making sure that personalization is not the automatic choice would make a really big difference. Todd Landman  30:53  It's just an amazing set of insights. You've taken us from Socrates to socks here today. And it's been an incredible journey listening to you and so much to think about and so many unresolved issues. And when I listen to you, and I read your book, you know, I feel like I should get off the grid immediately, and put my hood on because I don't want anyone reading my mind and I don't want anyone selling me socks. But for now, Susie, it was just great to have you on this episode of the Rights Track and thanks ever so much. Susie Alegre  31:20  My pleasure. Thank-you so much for having me. Christine Garrington  31:23  Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rights Track, which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts with funding from 3DI. You can find a detailed show notes on the website at www.RightsTrack.org. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts to access future and earlier episodes.    

On the day after Data Protection Day (or Privacy Day, depending on whether you are tomato or tomato) we take a look at privacy enhancing technologies - how to control, restrict and eliminate your personal data footprint (if that’s what you want to do). This podcast will be invaluable for privacy professionals that want to know what PETs are available and for consumers that would like to have greater control of their digital profiles. GDPR Now! Is brought to you by This Is DPO. www.thisisdpo.co.uk. Guest/s Abigail Dubiniecki Data Protection Specialist My Inhouse Lawyer https://www.linkedin.com/in/abigaild/ Host Mark Sherwood-Edwards info@thisisdpo.co.uk Materials Competition and Markets Authority (UK competition regulator) report on digital advertising https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-lifts-the-lid-on-digital-giants Links to PETs (Privacy Enhancing Tech) and resources mentioned in the podcast (and more!) Disclaimer – not endorsing any PET in particular, just sharing info. Want a pretty version or more explanation? Check out my LinkedIn profile for a Slideshare of a presentation and handy Infographic – available next week. Let’s help build this list. Which PETs are you using or curious to try? If they’re not here, let Abigail know via contact details in the show notes so I can update my list. Inform yourself, update software, adjust privacy settings, use 2FA! Privacy Analyzer (https://privacy.net/analyzer): Analyses your browser to reveal what can be learned about you and recommend actions you can take DuckDuckGo Device Privacy Tips https://spreadprivacy.com/tag/device-privacy-tips/ ‘Learn’ tab in the DisconnectMe Privacy Pro VPN (iOS only) – ‘learn’ materials available without paying. Just download the app and click!: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/disconnect-privacy-pro-entire/id1057771839?ls=1 Consumer Reports articles & videos with quick-fixes in bite-sized pieces: https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/linkedin-privacy-settings/ www.consumerreports.org/video/view/electronics/news/6050416388001/protecting-your-online-privacy/ Terms of Service, Didn’t Read (TOSDR https://tosdr.org/): one-stop shop for digested Ts & Cs of most popular online providers, including score cards. Brilliant browser add-on offers automatic assessment of pages you access. Addresses privacy notices & terms e.g. cancellation, etc. Ghostery (www.ghostery.com) lets you block ads and trackers, watch the watchers, and speed up your browser with a suite of products, some of which are free, others reasonably privacy. A new product – Ghostery Midnight (www.ghostery.com/midnight) – claims to protect your entire device while giving granular preference management at the app-by app level. Sounds like having your own personal privacy watchdog on your device. Extension is free!! But some of the other products are paid. Baycloud (https://baycloud.com) was one of the early champions of privtech, starting in the DNT space. They offer B2C and B2B resources. Baycloud Bouncer let reveals who’s tracking you and gives you a handy dashboard to adjust your preferences (https://baycloud.com/bouncer). You can also pre-scan websites you’d like to visit from the comfort of Baycloud’s site. Try before you buy (so to speak, with your data I mean). Free!! Have I been pwned?(https://haveibeenpwned.com) will help you check whether your account or credentials has been compromised based on research into the (sigh) multitudinous data breaches. Free!! DuckDuckGo privacy report card for websites (https://duckduckgo.com/app): instantly evaluates and remediates websites you visit to give you a before and after score. Browser add-on for various browser types on desktop but only available for iOS on mobile. Free!! Deseat.Me (www.deseat.me) : Helps you clean up your online presence by instantly getting a list of all your accounts, allowing you to sort through and delete them / unsubscribe. Personal Data.io: A self-named “integrated toolbox addressing surveillance capitalism”. This advocacy group goes beyond providing tools for e.g. filing DSARs, there is a forum (https://forum.personaldata.io) and a number of chat groups for trouble-shooting, contributing, advocacy and knowledge-exchange) You can share your experience or tap into people’s expertise, commiserate or find journalists to raise awareness about your experience or discoveries. This is the group that helped journalist Judith Duportail, who was researching dating apps, learn that Tinder had over 800 (disturbing) pages of data on her. Worth a read here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/26/tinder-personal-data-dating-app-messages-hacked-sold My Permissions(https://mypermissions.com): app that does a privacy scan (Privacy Cleaner) of your social media / collaboration apps to help you identify who can access your data. It identifies your current permissions and let’s you quickly and efficiently manage them all from one place. A small fee required to manage permissions, but there is a free tier. Princeton IoT Inspector (https://iot-inspector.princeton.edu/) let’s you watch your smart devices back. Automatically discovers IoT devices and analyzes their network traffic to identify security and privacy issues. Currently only available on MacOS High Sierra or Mojave (waitlist for Windows, Linus and MacOS Catalina). PiHole for Raspberry Pi (https://pi-hole.net): Protect your entire network from ads and targeting. Block in-app and SmartTV ads. Free!! but powered by donations. You need a supported OS and hardware (Raspberry Pi). Strong Passwords: NCSC ‘3 random words’ guidance: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/top-tips-for-staying-secure-online/use-a-strong-and-separate-password-for-email. Test password strength on Comparitech: https://www.comparitech.com/privacy-security-tools/password-strength-test/. Generate secure, unique passwords with https://1password.com. VPN, tracking-blockers, ad-blockers, including some in-app / whole-of-device options and free web extensions: Bitnet Defender (https://www.bitdefender.com/toolbox) Guardian (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/guardian-firewall-vpn/id1363796315) Disconnect.Me (https://disconnect.me) ProtonVPN (https://protonvpn.com) Adblock Fast (https://adblockfast.com) HTTPS Everywhere (https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere) Privacy Badger (https://www.eff.org/privacybadger) Privacy Possum (https://download.cnet.com/Privacy-Possum/3000-11745_4-77899656.html) Who Targets Me browser extension re: political microtargeting (https://whotargets.me/en/) Private Search and Browsers: DuckDuckGo! (https://duckduckgo.com) StartPage.com (www.startpage.com) Qwant & QwantJR (https://www.qwant.com) Ecosia (https://ecosia.org) Firefox (https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/new/?redirect_source=firefox-com) Brave (https://brave.com) Cliqz (https://cliqz.com/en) Use their brilliant add-ons like Facebook Container, universal cookie consent. Private chat, calls, collab: jitsimeet (https://meet.jit.si) Signal (www.signal.org) Wire (https://app.wire.com/auth) NextCloud Talk (https://nextcloud.com/talk). Secure email: Proton Mail (https://protonmail.com) NextCloud (https://nextcloud.com/athome/) Lock down social media (or switch to something better): Data Detox story: https://onezero.medium.com/find-out-what-google-and-facebook-know-about-you-31d0fa6d7b61 CitizenLab security planner: https://securityplanner.org/#/ Surveillance Self Defense social media tool: https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/protecting-yourself-social-networks; Private social networks: Minds (https://www.minds.com/) MeWe (https://mewe.com) Mastodon (https://mastodon.social/about) Diaspora (https://diasporafoundation.org/) Popjam (for kids): https://web.popjam.com/home. Exercise your rights, control your online identity: TapMyData (https://tapmydata.com/) Deseat.me (https://www.deseat.me/) Just Delete Me (https://justdeleteme.xyz) Data Rights Finder (https://www.datarightsfinder.org) Personaldata.io forum (https://forum.personaldata.io/) Yoti (https://www.yoti.com) SecureKey’s Verified.Me (Canada only for now: https://verified.me/) Take your data back: Personal Data Accounts: Hub of All Things (Dataswift): https://www.hubofallthings.com/ Digi.Me (https://digi.me) MesInfos (http://mesinfos.fing.org/english/) inrupt (https://inrupt.com/) Go forth and make good privacy choices: Exit Google Maps and use TomTom instead (https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/) Read & support creators and journalists in ad-free, targeting free spaces like Correspondent (https://thecorrespondent.com/) & Medium (https://medium.com/) Listen to (or create your) Podcasts on Radio Public (https://radiopublic.com/) Pickatale reading & audio app for kids age 0 - 10 (https://pickatale.co.uk/) OneZeroMe Financial Passport (https://onezero-me.com/) Get value from it (or share the love!): Brave Rewards (https://brave.com/brave-rewards/); My Good-Loop ethical adtech (https://my.good-loop.com/#my); My Offrz (https://myoffrz.com/en/fuer-nutzer/); HATDeX (https://hatdex.dataswift.io/). Give back Privtech folks & advocates work hard & use their incredible expertise to make a difference. Help fund them. Pay for their tools. Support their cause. Contribute your own sweat & skills. Spread the word. Most BigTech apps who’ve lost their way were starving startups at some point. Help privtech scale!! It means a better future for all of us. Help Open Rights Group make more privacy notices machine-readable: https://generator.projectsbyif.com/; Participate in workgroups like Forum.PersonalData.io; Donate money, time or skills to TOSDR, PiHole, and others asking for help. Still want more? Learn here: The Ultimate Guide to Online Privacy – 150+ Ninja Tips: https://fried.com/privacy ; Privacy Tools.io : https://www.privacytools.io/ Reset the Net Privacy Pack: https://pack.resetthenet.org/; Data Ethics.eu: Digital Self Defense tab; news; CitizenLab’s Net Alert keeps you updated on online threats & offers solutions. Security Planner is very handy. NCSC Top Tips for Staying Secure Online; Data Rights Finder (Open Rights Group). Special Guest: Abigail Dubiniecki.

Hello! Why are political adverts banned on TV and radio but allowed all over websites like Facebook and Google? Is it time to update our campaign laws for the 21st century? Sam Jeffers explains how campaign group ‘Who Targets Me’ are opening up the black box of online ads in elections. Then digital campaigning expert Kate Dommett talks about why current electoral rules aren’t up to the job and what we need to do to fix them.ANDThe wonderful Sooz Kempner is here to chat through this week of the election campaign. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Chris and Sam sit down with Sam Jeffers, experienced digital organizer/researcher and founder of "Who Targets Me?" - an app that lets you know how you're being targeted in this federal election. Alexi and Chris sift through the news, including the impact of PMJTs brownface scandal on the polls. It's a packed one folks!

Peter Van Dusen has today’s top stories from the federal campaign. Maternity and parental leave benefits have been key policy promises from the Conservatives and Liberals in recent days. We have analysis from Lindsay Tedds, associate professor at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. Tsur Somerville, a University of British Columbia professor specializing in real estate finance, talks about affordable housing and NDP campaign pledges. Political commentators Ashton Arsenault, Anne McGrath, and Susan Smith analyze the latest campaign developments. Sam Jeffers, a Ryerson Leadership Lab visiting global fellow and co-founder of “Who Targets Me,” talks about social media misinformation and the 2019 campaign.

Ireland is no stranger to referendums. This week we talk to elections expert and transparency campaigner Liz Carolan who co-founded the Transparent Referendum Initiative which used the technology available through Who Targets Me to monitor online advertising during the recent referendum on the country's abortion laws. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Back once again with the ill behaviour, block rocking beats and the lowdown on tech & politics. This week we talk to digital campaigning guru Sam Jeffers about Who Targets Me, a global effort to crowdsource data on political adverts through a simple browser plug-in. We talk the evolution of digital campaigning, who's buying Brexit ads, what 'made for social' content looks like and whether Donald Trump really did use the same tactics as Barack Obama when it came to mobilising voters online. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Facebook has announced new rules on political advertising in the UK; you'll need to prove your identity and location, and each ad will carry a message saying who paid for it. Sam Jeffers is co-founder of Who Targets Me, an organisation that tracks political ads. James Harding, the former Director of BBC News, explains Tortoise, his "slow news" venture which promises "open journalism” and a “different kind of newsroom”. And Claire Beale, global editor-in-chief of Campaign, on her magazine's 50th anniversary and new trends in advertising. Presenter: Amol Rajan Producer: Richard Hooper

Dr. Nick Anstead, Associate Professor in Media and Communications at the LSE, guests to discuss his new research on British parties' Facebook ad targeting during the 2017 election. Using a data from the Chrome browser created by Who Targets Me, Dr. Anstead and his team compare the content, tone, personalization, and calls to action used in these ads. We discuss the findings of that study, as well as outline three challenges for academics studying Facebook ad targeting moving forward: the epistemological, the conceptual, and the systematic. Read the full study here!

Episode 111 - The last podcast before a summer break and you'll be pleased to hear it's filled with....Brexit and anti-Semitism in the Labour party! Hooray! Something a bit different for you! Sigh. On the plus side Tiernan (@tiernandouieb) also interviews Sam Jeffers (@wrklsshrd) from Who Targets Me (@whotargetsme) on the lack of transparency in online political advertising.Please fill in this short survey about ParPolBro: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/X9BSQVMDonate to the Patreon at www.patreon.com/parpolbroBuy me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/parpolbroFollow us on Twitter @parpolbro, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/ParPolBro/ and the new fancy webpage at http://www.partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Social Media and Politics Podcast is a podcast bringing you innovative, first-hand insights into how social media is changing the political game. Subscribe for interviews and analysis with politicians, academics, and leading industry experts to get their take on how social media influences the ways we engage with politics and democracy. Connect with us on Twitter @SMandPPodcast & Facebook: Social Media and Politics Podcast In this episode, Sam Jeffers, co-founder of Who Targets Me, joins the podcast to discuss how sponsored Facebook ads were used by political parties in the 2017 British General Election. Who Targets Me is a project collecting targeted Facebook ads via a Google Chrome extension, and its aim is to shed light on who's posting political dark ads as well as who's being targeted. We discuss the project and what the initial data shows from GE2017. You can follow Sam on Twitter @wrklsshrd.

The Social Media and Politics Podcast is a podcast bringing you innovative, first-hand insights into how social media is changing the political game. Subscribe for interviews and analysis with politicians, academics, and leading industry experts to get their take on how social media influences the ways we engage with politics and democracy. Connect with us on Twitter @SMandPPodcast & Facebook: Social Media and Politics Podcast Dr. Shelley Boulianne, Associate Professor in Sociology at MacEwan University, joins the show to share insights from her research on how social media is impacting citizens' engagement in civic and political life. Dr. Boulianne discusses the findings of her meta-analysis studies, comparing the results of existing research in order to better uncover how social media is affecting citizens engagement with politics. You can follow her on Twitter @DrBoulianne. Check out Dr. Boulianne's full research paper that we discuss in the podcast: "Revolution in the making? Social media effects across the globe". Full Transcript: [00:00:00] Michael Bossetta: Welcome to Episode 26 of the Social Media Politics Podcast, bringing you expert insights into how social media is changing the political game. I'm your host, Michael Bossetta, political scientist at the University of Copenhagen. You can follow us on Twitter @SMandPPodcast, and also our Facebook Page: Social Media and Politics Podcast. [00:00:48] Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm going to be interviewing Dr. Shelley Boulianne, who is an Associate Professor of Sociology at MacEwan University in Canada. And as we alluded to a little bit in our previous episode, looking at social media use in the British elections, as academics we tend to really focus in on one aspect of social media and politics. We'll look at one platform for one specific case or one specific protest. And what's cool about Dr. Boulianne's work is she's been looking at, in some cases hundreds of studies, and looking at the findings of those and then seeing what are the similarities and differences between those studies. And what really do we know about the effects of social media on for example: people's likelihood to vote, or people's likelihood to engage in activism or community involvement? [00:02:40] My guest today is Dr. Shelley Boulianne, Associate Professor in Sociology at MacEwan University. Dr. Boulianne is an expert on how digital media influences civic engagement and political participation and joins us via Skype from Edmonton Canada. Dr. Boulianne, Thanks so much for taking the time out and welcome to The Social Media and Politics Podcast thank you very much for inviting me. So as I mentioned, in your research you're interested in the influence of digital media on civic and political engagement. Could you lay out these concepts for our listeners? What exactly is civic and political engagement? [00:03:12] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Sure. My working definition of civic and political engagement includes activities designed to influence government activities designed to improve community life and activities designed to express one's views about civic and political issues. So the type of activities that tend to link up with these studies are activities such as: voting, participating in boycotts, protesting in the streets volunteering in the community, talking politics, and then donating to political campaigns, charities, political causes. [00:03:43] Michael Bossetta: And is it actions from only citizens or are there other actors that can engage in these type of activities? [00:03:51] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Well the research that I'm trying to summarize or is largely focused on surveys of citizens. [00:03:57] Michael Bossetta: And speaking of that research you've done a number of really great what's called meta-analyses, looking at how social and digital media influence these type of engagement. So can you describe what a meta-analysis is and kind of how you go about conducting one? [00:04:13] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Sure. A meta-analysis is a systematic analysis of existing research on a topic. Specifically, I like to call it a quantitative analysis of quantitative studies on a topic. It's largely used in the medical and health sciences, and it's often used to summarize a large body of experiments on a particular topic. So I and others have adapted meta-analysis techniques to try to summarise survey research on specific topics. So like other meta-analyses I search for manuscripts through academic databases. I also use Google Scholar to find sources. And finally I consult the reference lists of relevant works to identify relevant research. [00:04:53] Michael: Ah ha, so You look at a study and then who else has cited that study to sort of broaden that net. [00:04:58] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Sure, and then which sources have that study cited. So we're always building on each other's academic research and so I go forward and backwards with the citation lists. Who have they cited? And who is citing this reference, using Google Scholar and other similar software. [00:05:15] Michael Bossetta: And then how do you go about it from there? So you have this this huge pool of studies. I mean do you go through and read each one individually or do you look at only there their findings and results? [00:05:26] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: So my focus within that area of research is on survey research. I mean there is a lot of studies on social media engagement that are rich descriptions about specific election campaigns or protest events, and so that type of literature is really hard to summarize because it uses very different methodology. And I have it on my To-Do list to try to write some sort of comprehensive lit review of those types of research projects. But for a meta-analysis it really is meant to be a quantitative review. And so my research is largely focused on survey research. So with these latest studies that I've done have actually hired students to go through studies and figure out whether they use survey research and whether they test the relationship between social media use and engagement. [00:06:15] Michael Bossetta: Interesting. So do they actually scout the research as well or is it you who do scouts the research and then passes it down to them and has that kind of filter out what's relevant and what's not? [00:06:26] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: I would say it's a combination of things. I do like to send them to the academic databases to do searches based on keywords and to consult within the academic databases. And then in terms of Google Scholar we're all sort of hooked in to that, you know to find updates on things that we've queried about or we find updates on what's been cited in this area of research. And so we get those regular updates. So it's a lot of back and forth with my research assistants. Sometimes you find the same study on the same day and we're sending it to each other saying look there's a new study. So I guess a it's team effort in terms of finding those studies. [00:07:05] Michael Bossetta: Right. And what's the... It's an interesting method for me because it's not that you're, you know, going out and conducting surveys yourself. Even though you do that and other research. But what's the benefit of this meta-analysis method, versus using survey data from a specific election or going out and conducting your own? [00:07:25] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Well, definitely. I mean, any single survey is going to have its limitations. We can only ask so many questions. And then of course our sample size will be very much limited by budget. And so I argue the benefit of a meta-analysis is that it basically takes all of these surveys, all of the people who have responded to these surveys, all those survey questions that have been asked within these surveys, and compiling all of that data together in one data set to try to summarize what is the big picture around the relationship between social media and engagement. [00:07:57] Michael Bossetta: And so let's get into that in a little bit. In 2015, you published an analysis of 36 studies that looked at how social media influences political participation. And so my first question is why did you choose to focus on that topic specifically? What's interesting about the connection between social media and participation? [00:08:20] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Well, that paper came about in a rather odd way. I was invited to speak at the 2014 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting. I hadn't planned to do a meta-analysis, but one of the conference organizers read my 2009 piece around internet use and engagement, and she wanted me to give an update on the findings. And so what we had agreed upon and what we could do and the timelines that we had, I decided to focus very narrowly on social networking sites and what this new research on social networking sites was saying about engagement and that's how I got back into I guess the meta-analysis business. I was invited to update my findings, and I decided to do that very narrow focused. [00:09:03] Michael Bossetta: And what was the timeframe of those studies that you were looking at? [00:09:07] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Those, because I focused on social networking sites, I would say I have just maybe one or two studies that was in 2007, possibly one in 2006. But the bulk of the research was collected in 2008 through the 2013 time period. And then of course the paper was published in 2015. So there's always a little bit of a time lag between when the paper the meta-analysis gets published and then when the data has been collected in these other sources. [00:09:37] Michael Bossetta: Yeah it's interesting. 2008 is kind of an early adoption period. I think especially for scientists that are that are looking at this, so you have the nice, uh, catching the beginning there. So what did you find? Was there, you know, some common findings that came out by looking at all these 36 different studies? Or was it really a kind of grab bag of different findings? [00:09:58] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Well I mean, my intent with that piece was really to just give a quick update on what was happening with that research on social networking sites and engagement. So I had a rather narrow focus or a narrow intent with that research. Which was just to give an insight into what was happening. And so that piece really focused on what types of social media uses matter for what types of engagement. And also to address the broader question that was going around, which was: Is social media having a negative effect on engagement? Because that is basically what the concern was at that time when I was writing. And so my objective was to address that point. Is it having a negative effect? And I think pretty conclusively said that it's not. I mean, most of the studies we're coming up with positive effects are seeing a positive relationship between social networking site usage and engagement in civic and political life. [00:10:53] Michael Bossetta: And what exactly does that mean? A "positive effect." We have some students listening to the show who may not be so caught up in their effects research. What is it that that increases that participation or has that positive effect? [00:11:06] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: So I think that that piece really highlighted two different aspects of social media use that we're having positive effects. One is that social media was building people's social networks. So, you know, we go to social media or social networking sites, we're finding friends, we're building up those networks, and we know from research from the 1950s that building your networks increases the likelihood that you get asked to participate in civic and political life. It increases the chances that you will in fact participate in civic and political life. And so what I think that 2015 piece illustrated is that this is happening online now. It's happening through these social networking sites. People are joining groups, they're building their friendship networks, and these networks are becoming mobilized. So people are more likely to be engaged in civic and political life. And then the people that are engaged in civic and political life are also using social media to talk about their activities. And so we see that sort of dual process happening, based on that research. [00:12:08] Michael Bossetta: And, was it so much that the networks corresponded to one's offline network, or? Because there's been some talk about social media enabling people who had known each other previously to kind of seek out and form networks around similar issues or what we're calling "issue publics." Is that the type of networks you're talking about? Or is it more about mobilizing your friends who you already know. [00:12:33] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Yeah I think that this is where the research needs to get into more of the nuances. What type of networks do you create in your social networking sites? And I think part of the question is whether or not your social networks are different across different platforms. So we know quite a bit about Facebook research. Because still, the large majority of this research is done focusing on Facebook. And so, the networks we create and maintain on Facebook are very much different than other platforms where we might interact with people that we don't know as well. We have weak ties too. So I'm glad to see that the research is actually moving in this direction of finding out what types of networks are we creating and maintaining in these social networking sites. Because I think that the different types of networks are going to have different outcomes in terms of whether or not we become more engaged in civic and political life. But again, my research is responding to what's out there. And I think that there needs to be more research on the nuances of what types of networks we're creating in these spaces. [00:13:36] Michael Bossetta: Right. Because that might be a little bit difficult to get out with with survey data or the predominant survey approach needs to be updated. But I want to ask you about one of the difficulties that you noted in that paper, which was that the different research designs and methods can make it a bit difficult to compare the results of these studies. So can you go into that a little bit in terms of where the difficulties in comparing these studies it sometimes might be very different even though they're asking the same questions? [00:14:04] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Right. Well I would say that the majority of the studies use cross-sectional research designs, which is basically you interview a group of people and you look at what they said about media use, and what they said about engagement, and then try to make some sort of assessment of: is there a relationship? And so, for those studies it is much easier and straightforward to try to summarize the results and to say look these two things, these responses to the media use questions and responses to the engagement question, are sort of going in the same direction. And the direction usually is, the more you use social media, the more that your reporting higher are levels of engagement in civic and political life. So these are rather straightforward to deal with them the analysis techniques are pretty standard. And so this was quite easy for me to do in terms of summarizing. What gets complicated is the longitudinal designs. And I would argue the value of the longitudinal design, despite the complexity that it introduces, is that there is great value in the longitudinal design. So the designs that we're seeing, they track people over time to see if there's changes in their levels of engagement, and whether these changes can be related to changes in social media use. And so it's a much stronger set of data to try to think that there's a causal relationship - that on is causing the other. But the problem is there's a much more complexity in these types of designs. They tend to be limited in terms of their sample size. They tend to use student samples because they're the easiest ones to track over a period of time. And so these complexities of the sampling approach, the complexities in the analysis approach, that makes them very hard to summarize the result. [00:15:46] Michael Bossetta: Yeah, and I would think that it's a little bit difficult today, where you have, as you're saying there's a lot of focus on college students, using Facebook when Facebook first came out. But now what we see is some, you know, 15 and unders don't have Facebook. They might be just on Instagram, and then older people are starting to come on Facebook, and there's tons of new platforms to cope on. So I think it's, it will be difficult in the future to kind of disentangle that over time because of all these external factors that are in the social media landscape. [00:16:21] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Right. And just to add to that the more platforms, I mean, this will be great. I can respond to the differences by platform once there's research out there, when there are multiple studies out there looking at different platforms. But I guess the problem is that, if they are using multiple platforms, how do we figure out: So this is you know an Instagram effect, and this is Facebook effect, and this is a Twitter effect? That makes it very hard because a lot of these people are using multiple platforms. [00:16:48] Michael Bossetta: And do you think there's, by looking at self reported survey data, I mean do you think there's a need for more studies looking at the actual metrics of social media? Or, is there a way that you can incorporate that, or complement that, by survey data? Because you know, one of the problems with surveys is that people say they do something, and maybe it's inaccurate what they're actually doing. So what are your thoughts on that? [00:17:10] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Well I absolutely love the idea of mixed methods research. My own research you mentioned, I do surveys. Well, I do surveys, and then I supplement the survey data with other sources. So for example, the projects that I'm working on right now looks at social media use. So many of these same survey questions that I've seen used in other studies, I look at social media use measures. I look at engagement measures, and I'm looking at it around a particular event, which was charitable donations in relation to a wildfire that my province had last year. And what we're doing is we're using the survey data, and we can establish that there's a connection there. That there's a correlation, or a relationship. The more you use social media to find out news about this event, the more likely you were to donate to the Red Cross and other similar organizations. But what we did, that I think should be done more often, is we looked at what was happening on Twitter. What was the Twitter discourse around that time period? And what you're seeing to supplement what the survey data was saying. What you're seeing is these messages of "help out," "donate." You know, "these people are suffering." You know, "we need to do something." Those sort of calls to action were evident in the Twitter data. So we use the combination of sources, and I think that that's really where research should be done. I know that this is done often in book format, where you see survey data supplemented with social media analytics, but I'd like to see more done in the article length because I really do think that surveys are only so good for making that theoretical connection between two variables that there really needs to be details about what is the content that is circulating. [00:18:53] Michael Bossetta: Right. So it's not necessarily so much that people are just using social media and then happen to organically donate to this cause, but that there are actually certain things going on on the platform, like asking people to donate, that would then elicit more of that response. [00:19:09] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Exactly. [00:19:10] Michael Bossetta: OK. So, let's fast forward to today maybe focusing on the 36 studies that analysis is not doing proper justice to a more recent work where you've looked at 150 different studies on social media and participation. And what what changes did you observe if any between looking at 36 studies in a more updated list of 150? [00:19:31] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Right. So, one of the things that I saw right away when I started looking at this literature is that what people are focused on in terms of social media use has changed. There is a lot more studies that look at the use of social media for political expression or for discussing political issues. And so there was enough of those studies that have focused on this that I can really look at that particular finding, and look at whether it had outcomes on people's offline engagement in civic and political life. So that was one thing that was new with this area. Again, these meta-analysis have to evolve based on what the research is producing, and the research was producing some consistent findings around this idea of political expression on social media and offline forms of engagement. [00:20:20] Michael Bossetta: Ah ha. And I've been looking at a few of these studies where they'll say, for example, that those who are more likely to tweet during a political event are more likely to go out and vote, or go out and canvass, or campaign. And I'm wondering, I mean, does that have anything to do with that the people being surveyed or already politically interstate? Or, how do you disentangle that from the causal mechanism of social media to go out and do something? I mean is that something that's clear from from this 150 study meta-analysis? [00:20:56] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: I think, again, this is where the value of a longitudinal design comes in, because we can account for things like are they already politically interested. We can ask that question and try to account for, you know, is it political interest that it's causing both does observing these political events through a second screening and whatnot, and also causing engagement in political life? I mean, we can try to do that, and try to untangle that process using the cross-sectional data, but really the value is in longitudinal studies or experimental studies. If there were studies looking at changes in behavior, then we could untangle the causal process. I don't think that we're there yet. I mean the longitudinal studies that we have really aren't able to untangle that process just quite yet in terms of what is causing what. [00:21:49] Michael Bossetta: And are there any other differences that you observe between... So in the 2015 study you found this positive effect on social media and participation. And then, in the updated version, is it similar positive effect?. You know, I'm thinking about these echo chambers and this kind of reinforcement idea. Did you find evidence for that or was it still a generally positive trend? [00:22:14] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: So I definitely still find that positive trend. I guess the reason that I set out to do the second piece is that one of the questions that I couldn't properly address were that 2015 paper is the magnitude of the relationship. And so I look at, yes, there's positive effects, but only half of them were statistically significant. And I know researchers are always concerned about, is it significant? So the question I ask with this new study is: Are the effect sizes substantive? Is it really a game changer that social media use is going to cause changes in things like voter turnout? Is social media use going to change someone's decision about whether to participate in a street protest, or whether to volunteer in their community? And so I needed to look at the sizes, to look at that magnitude of the relationship. So that was really the primary objective in starting out the second piece on this meta-analysis of social media trying to get at: what is the magnitude of the relationship? And in particular, the discourse isn't debating anymore whether there's a positive effect, it's debating whether or not there's a substantial effect. And so that there's a debate about whether the effects are revolutionary. And so that's the title that I have for this paper, is trying to assess whether or not the effects at least when we're talking about citizens engagement in civic and political life, are these are facts revolutionary? Are they game changers? [00:23:38] Michael Bossetta: And, have you gotten to that final verdict at this point or are you still working through the data? [00:23:44] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: I would say that there's certain aspects where we can see that there's revolutionary effects. And the aspect that I think is most evident is around the political expression on social media. We see it in the survey data and I think that the analytics of social media data is showing that same pattern. And so I see that there's something possibly revolutionary in there. And the other dimension, or the other really that I'm analysing this data, is to try to understand how the effects differ across different political contexts. Because I think that's part of the answer of whether these effects are revolutionary, depends on where we're talking about these effects occurring. So social media affects in a media rich environment, or in a system where there's a free press, I mean social media effects are going to compete with other media effects. Whereas we see in the meta data, when you look at systems where there's a lack of a free press, we see a much larger relationship. And again it's social media that's filling in a huge gap in terms of information needs, and it's causing a larger effect in terms of peoples' engagement in civic and political life. [00:24:53] Michael Bossetta: So, that might be something like a country where they don't have a free press, maybe an authoritarian regime, but social media sort of has this potential to create awareness about something that may spill over into a protest that's organized on social media. [00:25:09] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Yes, absolutely. And I would say that it's evident in systems where there's not a free press or the authoritarian regimes. But also there's a strong relationship in terms of systems where there's a transition in democracy or there's a partly free press. So, you know, it's developing a democratic system but it's still in those developmental stages. And you see strong effects there as well. [00:25:31] Michael Bossetta: So kind of dovetailing on that, and it's kind of a loaded question, but based on having looked at all of this data, what's your assessment in terms of the potential for these social media in terms of impacting the quality democracy? Are they positive or negative for democracy? Or is it, you know, the argument that they're neutral and it's how you use them? [00:25:53] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Well, I guess my first reaction to that question is that we need to look beyond democracy and the role of social media beyond democratic systems, because as I mentioned the effects are quite substantial when we're looking at other types of political systems. And so asking about whether it's good for democracy, you know, that's sort of a different answer because it is good for citizen participation in all types of political systems. And the question of: Is it good for the quality of democracy? I guess that sort of depends on what you think is good for democracy, and I think more citizen participation is a good thing for democracy. So in that line, or on that note I would say that social media is having a positive influence on democracy as well as non- democratic states. [00:26:40] Michael Bossetta: Good answer. And just wrapping up, can you give us a teaser about where your research is heading at the moment? So you mentioned a study about wildfires and the effect of social media participation on that. Anything else we should look out for? [00:26:56] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Yes, along the lines of the meta-analysis. I have decided to revisit the 2009 study that I had published around internet use and engagement. And so I have a database there of over 300 studies... [00:27:09] Michael Bossetta: Jeez... [00:27:09] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Yes, I'm still collecting the studies. For that one in particular I want to answer the question what this new research about whether the 2016 period is distinctive. Whether the U.S. election in 2016 will produce different outcomes in terms of citizen engagement. But I'm also looking more around the world and there's a lot of Western democracies having elections in 2017, and so I have this database, and I have some ideas about what's happening in the database. But I'm really looking at these these brand new studies to add to the question of are we seeing something dramatically shift in terms of media and its role in citizens engagement. So that's one of the objectives that I have over the next few months. The other one is to look at the effects and how they're distinctive for youth. Because I think this has been a reoccurring theme with my meta-analyses to say that youth are distinctive, the effects are possibly larger for youth. And so I've decided to tackle that question: how does social media and digital media, how does it have a different affect for youth compared to other age groups? [00:28:17] Michael Bossetta: Very interesting, very relevant, and a huge knot to untangle though. So, best of luck with that, I'll be looking very much forward to reading the final results. And Dr. Boulianne thanks so much for coming on the show. Appreciate your time. [00:28:31] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: All right, thank you very much Michael. [00:28:33] Michael Bossetta: I've just been speaking with Dr. Shelley Boulianne, Associate Professor of Sociology at MacEwan University. You can follow her on Twitter @drboulianne. [00:28:46] All right, that's a wrap for this episode of The Social Media and Politics podcast. Hope you enjoyed the show, and thanks so much for tuning in. Next week we'll be speaking with Sam Jeffers co-founder of the group Who Targets Me, and a former executive director at Blue State Digital. [00:29:02] Feel free to connect with us on Twitter @SMandPPodcast podcast. Direct any questions, feedback, suggestions for future episodes that way. If you want to be a hero leave a review on Apple Podcasts and help us game those algorithms. We're climbing thanks to you guys. Keep downloading. Keep sharing. Keep learning. I'm your host, Michael Bossetta, signing off from off in Copenhagen. See you next time.

Hoe gebruiken politieke partijen sociale media zoals Facebook om kiezers te winnen en hoe effectief is het? De Brit Sam Jeffers greep de verkiezingen van vandaag aan voor het lanceren van een speciale tool om hier inzicht in te geven. “Who Targets Me” heet het, “ Wie heeft het op mij gemunt”. In nog geen twee maanden tijd installeerden meer dan 11.000 Britten de plugin waarmee ze inzicht krijgen in duizenden politieke advertenties op social media.