The nature and consequences of online political microtargeting

We live in the era of microtargeting, in which political campaigns are increasingly sophisticated and use polls, databases for audience targeting, and complex modeling to reach voters wherever necessary. However, despite the sizeable scholarly focus on microtargeting’s potential dangers and effects, we still need a better understanding of how political campaigns use these techniques.
The dissertation The Nature and Consequences of Online Political Microtargeting contributes to such an understanding by examining how political campaigns employ microtargeting strategies, what this tells us about campaigns’ understanding of the electorate, and how likely voters are to be deceived by AI-generated content. It does so by leveraging data on political elites’ use of targeted advertisements on Facebook and Instagram, as well as novel experimental data testing voters’ abilities to discern between AI-generated images and real images.
Overall, the dissertation shows that political campaigns perceive voters in an ideological space through the lens of targeting options on social media, affecting how campaigns strategically maneuver. Furthermore, it shows that the consequences of online political microtargeting depend on technological advancements and changes. Online political microtargeting might therefore work as a divisive force with potentially democratically harmful consequences for the level of political polarization, democratic inclusion, and political accountability. Consequently, the dissertation argues that legislators and researchers need to expand their focus beyond microtargeting as the big “manipulation machine” and focus more on its divisive nature.