Dirty campaigning - what is new this time

Channel 4 News has done a great service in exposing the tactics of Cambridge Analytica. The key edition of three was the second one, containing an extended clip of a hidden camera sting. Believing he was speaking to an unscrupulous Sri Lankan campaign manager, a potential client, CA executive Turnbull described how their US arm targeted the 2016 Clinton presidential campaign. Turnbull was frank in pointing out that the aim was not to convert wavering voters to Trump, but to dissuade people who would normally vote Democrat for turning out. Official campaigns, which present the intellectual basis for a party's platform, are not as effective as the unofficial ones which affect the gut instinct rather than the head. The result in 2016 was the "Crooked Hillary" meme, distributed on social media via a myriad of accounts, and its variations.

So what is new, old sweats may ask. Labour is notorious round here for (unattributably of course) assassinating the character of the opposing candidate on the doorsteps as much as promoting their own. One can recall at least one general election in which a party was voted in not so much on the strength of their manifesto but because the outgoing people were so mired in scandal that their traditional supporters were turned away. Coming closer to our own time, Conservatives used assiduously-collected data to tailor attack letters and emails to swing voters in marginal seats leading up to the 2015 general election. And there are allegations of crossing an ethical, maybe a legal, line against Neath's Blue Telecoms.

At least in traditional canvassing, voters know that they are providing information in the context of an election contest. What is new and disturbing about the current scandal is that users of social media did not know that they were providing personal data to political operators.

Also of interest in the examination of what compels people to vote in certain ways is last Monday's edition of The Digital Human. The section on confirmation bias - we hear or see bias in a particular medium (e.g. the BBC) because we are looking out for it - is particularly interesting.