Page 24 - ARUBA TODAY

A24 TECHNOLOGY
Monday 12 March 2018

Digital ads, social media hide political campaign messaging

By NICHOLAS RICCARDI ported news site called The “need stronger tools” to
Associated Press California Republican, and weed out frauds, Gilchrist
The main events in a po- the executive director of said.
litical campaign used to Maine’s Republican party Social media also upends
happen in the open: a de- last month acknowledged campaign advertising
bate, the release of a ma- that he runs an anonymous practices. Federal regula-
jor TV ad or a public event website that is critical of tions require a record of ev-
where candidates tried to Democrats. ery political advertisement
earn a spot on the evening Phony allegations are noth- that is broadcast on televi-
news or the next day’s front ing new in politics. But they sion and radio. But online
page. used to circulate in auto- ads have no comparable
That was before the explo- mated phone calls, mailers requirements.
sion of Facebook, Twitter that were often tossed in Earlier this month, Twitter
and YouTube as political the trash or, as far back as Chief Executive Officer
platforms. Now some of a the 1800s, in partisan news- Jack Dorsey announced
campaign’s most pivotal This Oct. 26, 2016 file photo shows a Twitter sign outside of the papers that published just that the platform would
efforts happen in the of- company’s headquarters in San Francisco. once a day, noted Garlin take new steps to try to
ten-murky world of social Associated Press Gilchrist, executive direc- stop harassment and false
media, where ads can be the Campaign Legal Cen- phony Facebook groups tor of the Center for Social information. Facebook
targeted to ever-narrower ter in Washington, which pumping out falsehoods. Media Responsibility at the has partnered with media
slices of the electorate and seeks greater transparency The misinformation shows University of Michigan. organizations, including
run continuously with no in political spending. “And if no sign of abating. The The difference now is how The Associated Press, to
disclosure of who is paying reporters don’t know about U.S. Senate election in Ala- quickly false information flag false information on
for them. Reporters cannot it, they can’t ask questions bama in December was spreads. its platform. It recently an-
easily discern what voters about it.” rife with fake online reports “The problem is something nounced plans to reform
are seeing, and hoaxes The problem came to in support of Republican that’s always existed ... but its political advertising, in-
and forgeries spread in- widespread attention dur- Roy Moore, who eventu- social media is a different cluding making all ads on
stantaneously. ing the 2016 presidential ally lost to Democrat Doug animal than news distribu- a page visible to all view-
Journalists trying to hold race, when Donald Trump’s Jones amid allegations that tion in the past,” Gilchrist ers, regardless of whether
candidates accountable campaign invested heav- Moore had sexual contact said. they were intended to see
have a hard time keeping ily in digital advertising, with teenagers when he A study released this past the spots. It also will require
up. and the term “fake news” was a prosecutor in his 30s. week found that false infor- a line identifying the buyer
“There’s a whole dark area emerged to describe pro- Moore denied the accusa- mation spreads faster and on every political ad and
of campaigns out there Trump propaganda mas- tions. wider on Twitter than real create a four-year archive.
when, if you’re not part querading as online news. Politicians also try to create news stories. Researchers Still, because there are so
of the target group, you Russian interference in the their own news operations. at the Massachusetts Insti- many candidates for office
don’t know anything about campaign included covert U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes’ tute of Technology traced in the U.S., Facebook is lim-
them,” said Larry Noble of ads on social media and campaign funded a pur- the path of more than iting itself to federal races
126,000 stories on Twitter at first.
and found that the aver- “Facebook is moving faster
age false story takes about than regulators are around
10 hours to reach 1,500 us- the world toward some
ers compared with about better stuff,” said Sam Jef-
60 hours for real ones. On fers of the UK-based group
average, false information Who Targets You, which
reaches 35 percent more pushes for better online
people than true news. campaign disclosure.
A data analysis by He cited three recent elec-
Buzzfeed’s news site after tions in which underdog
the 2016 election found campaigns invested heav-
that the most popular fake ily in online ads and beat
stories generated greater the polling expectations to
engagement on Facebook win: the 2015 parliamenta-
than the top real stories in ry races and the Brexit vote
the three months before and the U.S. presidential
Election Day. race the following year.
Because it’s increasingly Who Targets You designed
easy to fabricate videos, an online tool that will col-
which are viewed as the lect Facebook political
most reliable evidence ads and deposit them in a
available online, reporters database.q