Saturday, July 21, 2012

Let's Ban Political Ads!

There are many advantages to living here in Hawai'i, but one of the best is that in Presidential campaigns we don't matter.  The state population is small by national standards and our one puny little Electoral College vote doesn't warrant spending much time or money on us.  This means that we are spared the media blitz during election years that is targeted at those of you who live in more important "swing" states.

We used to live in Ohio, a state that is regularly a focus of intense campaigning. This meant lots of visits by the Presidential candidates or their surrogates, rallies, door-to-door canvasing, and a relentless barrage of 30-second t.v. spots.  This began during the primary season and continued right to the November election.

I was reminded of the obnoxiousness of the t.v. ads recently when I had to make a short trip to the mainland to attend a funeral.  The airwaves were full of 30-second ads for Romney and Obama, all of which seemed designed to be low on information and high on emotional impact. Careful factual analysis of the messages in many of these ads would reveal them to be vacuous, but then they aren't supposed to be logical or informative.  The media specialists who create these spots are masters at manipulating image, innuendo, and emotional associations (you can enjoy recent ads from this year's campaigns at Stanford's Political Communications Lab web site).  The messages may be logically weak but they can be highly effective in swaying voter opinion anyway, particularly as part of negative advertising campaigns.  This is why candidates and their supporting organizations spend so much money on media, estimated to be nearly $100 million for this month of July alone, according to Washington Post's Dan Eggan.

In the 2008 election, the total spent on media reached a staggering $359 million (see the Center for Responsive Politics for more detailed information).  The total campaign spending by McCain and Obama during that election was more that $1 billion (!) according to data released by the Federal Election Commision.  This time around more relaxed accountability rules for donations via so-called "Social Welfare Organizations," like Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, and the recent Supreme Court ruling that corporations can donate unlimited amounts to "SuperPacs" are likely to push spending even higher.  If it weren't for the questionable ways in which this money is spent, we could regard it as a nice economic stimulus package.

Political ads have become increasingly negative over the last 20-30 years.  According to Shanto Iyengar, Director of the Stanford Political Communication Lab, negative campaigning in American politics blossomed as an effective strategy in the 1980's, pioneered by Fox News' Roger Ailes who was a campaign consultant to Ronald Reagan and George Bush at that time. Although the Republicans were the first to use negative campaigning effectively, Iyengar points out that the Democrats caught up quickly and are just as apt to use it as a campaign strategy.  His research shows that negative campaigning is particularly prominent in close elections and tends to depress voter turnout and polarize the electorate.  Given the likely closeness of the Obama/Romney race, then, we are probably going to see more and more negative ads this time around, and the campaigns will unfortunately reinforce the extreme polarization that is now paralyzing our government and will further reduce public perceptions of congress, already at an all-time low.  Whoopee.
 
Political ads are not held to the same "truth-in-advertising" principle that governs commercial advertising.  This is because they are considered "political speech" and are therefore protected by the First Amendment, to the point that broadcasters are required by law to air ads even if they contain demonstrably false information.  As a Time Magazine analysis of the 2008 election put it:
The noble idea undergirding what otherwise seems like a political loophole is the belief that voters have a right to uncensored information on which to base their decisions. Too often, however, the result is a system in which the most distorted information comes from the campaigns themselves. And as this year's presidential race is showing, that presents an opportunity for a candidate willing to go beyond simple distortions and exaggerations by making repeated and unapologetic use of objectively false statements.
So far I'd say the "this year" referred to in this analysis applies equally well to the current 2012 election.  Two online sources of unbiased examinations of the truth or falseness of  political statements that I find useful are PolitiFact.com and FactCheck.org , which I check regularly to get a more objective assessment of current campaign claims. Don't go to these sites expecting to support your hunch that one side is far more truthful than the other -- so far as I can tell the facts are abused about equally.  But the careful analyses of positions and statements (not just ads) can be very informative.

Shanto Iyengar points out that a growing trend in broadcast journalism has been to focus on political ads as news stories, which often simply gives them free air time and reduces a factual analysis to a matter of  "he-said-she-said."  In fact, savvy media consultants craft ads with this media attention in mind. For those voters who missed seeing the ads at other times, watching a news broadcast almost guarantees being exposed to at least some of them. Those who did see them during regular programming are exposed a second time.  In general news media attention to ad content rather than policy positions and proposals for solving problems may reinforce the negative tone of the election process and add to the polarization.  At the very least, focusing on ads and campaign strategy reduces coverage of more substantive information about candidates and their positions.  As Iyengar puts it: "in place of candidate positions and past performance on the issues, reporters gravitate toward the more entertaining facets of the campaign: the horse race, the advertising, the strategy, and whenever possible, instances of scandalous or unethical behavior."

Can the internet save us from this media morass?  There is no doubt that campaigning is incorporating more online technology as strategists try to reach the growing number of voters don't watch much t.v. but spend a lot of time online.  A recent report by Ryan Grim estimates that about 25% of consultant expenditures during this election cycle are going to online efforts.  And online ad campaigns seem to be effective. For example, the consulting firm Chong & Koster targeted some Florida voters with an average of five ads a day on Facebook, encouraging a no vote on a proposition that would have increased school class sizes. Voters exposed to the ads were more likely to vote no than a typical voter -- and more likely to oppose it than a typical Democrat. 

Online technology offers more than just a digitized medium for delivering the same ads, however.  Facebook and other social media are potentially powerful tools for linking candidate supporters and actively involving them in the campaign.  For instance, in one study described by Ryan Grim voter turnout was increased by messages from Facebook "friends" and people were more likely to remember information about the election when it came from a "friend" than from less personal sources.  As one top media consultant put it, candidates should not underestimate the power of social networks and peer-to-peer activism, and even though some politicians get nervous about the two-way nature of the online medium, they need to trust their supporters to fight for them in the online political debate. Whether this kind of activism produces positive or negative outcomes for the country as a whole remains to be seen.  Surely it depends on the quality and thoroughness of the information it is based on -- and this brings us right back to the original question concerning the content of campaign rhetoric.

A glimmer of hope for our electoral process is that online resources give voters access to substantive information about candidate positions on issues that is given short-shrift in in 30-second t.v. or internet ads and in most t.v. news coverage of campaign developments. Iyengar's assessment of the internet in this regard is particularly optimistic: 
...[internet] technology at least makes it possible for voters to bypass or supplement media treatment of the campaign and access information about the issues that affect them. Rather than waiting for news organizations to report on the policies they might care about, voters can take matters into their own hands and visit candidate websites to examine their positions on the issues. This form of motivated exposure is hardly an impediment to deliberation: paying attention to what the candidates have to say on the issues facilitates issue-oriented voting; paying attention to the media circus does not. Thus, there is some reason to hope that the spread of new forms of unmediated communication will eventually provide a better way to inform and engage voters.
 "Eventually" can't come soon enough for me.




Thursday, July 5, 2012

Hiding From Facebook

I'm a pretty tech-savy guy.  I have a blog and my own homepage.  I have three email accounts. I own three computers, two Ipods and an Ipad. I manage our home wireless network.  I back everything up in the cloud. I'm a webmaster for an educational resource called PsyberSite. I've even taught courses about how the internet has influenced our society, for example "The Social Psychology of Cyberspace."

You might think I would be in the thick of the social network phenomenon --Tweeting and Google +'ing and Facebooking like crazy.  But you would be wrong.

There is no doubt that these recent developments in internet technology are having a tremendous impact on social relationships and the structure of our social world.  As a social psychologist I regard the social networking phenomenon as something that is very significant and fascinating to study.  And to my friends  who are Facebook fans (some of whom are reading this right now), let me assure you that I appreciate the many positive benefits this technology can have -- staying in contact with friends, sharing important life experiences with them, finding and reconnecting with old friends, and in general adding to the social richness of life. 

However, my personal reaction has been quite different.  You see, despite (or maybe because of ) my close involvement with internet technology over the years I have a skeptical, aversive, even paranoid stance regarding these latest social developments.  My wife and I do have a Facebook page, but we hardly ever post anything on it.  We have a whopping total of 36 Friends, a pretty puny number compared to some people who have hundreds.  And I admit it is fun to read the posts of others and to learn of the events in their lives and the lives of their family and friends.  But we both balk when it comes to sharing the same sort of information on our own Facebook page.  I should point out here that my reluctance is greater than my wife's, and she has sometimes expressed regret at feeling left out of this phenomenon.  (Perhaps we will soon go our separate ways and get individual accounts.)

I think there are a couple of reasons why I'm hiding from Facebook, both of them stemming from personality flaws that are long-standing and deeply rooted.

First, I'm generally a very private person and even in face-to-face situations I'm not comfortable disclosing personal information, even to very close friends.  Of course, professorial pontificating is an entirely different matter, and I have never been reluctant to do that, though my students often viewed me as "aloof" and "impersonal."  I think I'm friendly and approachable but I'm hesitant to be very open except with a few people I've know for a long time.

It is possible on Facebook to divide "friends" into differing categories like "Close Friends, " "Acquaintances,"  "Family," and even to create your own divisions.  You can also create groups of "friends" within each of these categories depending on interests or activities and then share different information with people in each one.  I don't know how many Facebook users take advantage of these features, but I find the categorization process very daunting and fraught with the danger of forgetting who is in which group and posting something that inadvertently offends someone or is at least regarded by them as inappropriate.

Another related issue for me is that as part of my private personality it is difficult to feel comfortable with the high frequency that seems to be the norm in posting Facebook information. Even with very close friends I much prefer fewer but more intense and personal interactions.

My second reason for hiding from Facebook may be that I have this "thing" about institutions or organizations that quickly become big and powerful, no matter how benign they may seem.  (See my slogan for Snow Crash.) My negative reaction is a complex bundle of paranoia, issues with authority, and wanting to assert independence by being non-conformist -- in short, not entirely rational.  Facebook is indeed big, reaching 750 million users in just eight years. And it has certainly become powerful as well.  As Steven Johnson noted in a recent Wired Magazine analysis, "Facebook is on the cusp of becoming a medium unto itself—more akin to television as a whole than a single network, and more like the entire web than just one online destination.....The difference, of course, is that no one owns the web—or in some strange way we all own it. But with Facebook we are ultimately just tenant farmers on the land; we make it more productive with our labor, but the ground belongs to someone else."

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, wants us to be able to share everything, "...to make the world more open and connected."  He has created an interface that makes sharing extraordinarily easy to do -- but also that makes it easy for our social connections to be tracked and exploited.  Here's a small excerpt from the list of data Facebook receives and stores about users, taken from its Data Use Policy:
  • We receive data about you whenever you interact with Facebook, such as when you look at another person's timeline, send or receive a message, search for a friend or a Page, click on, view or otherwise interact with things, use a Facebook mobile app, or purchase Facebook Credits or make other purchases through Facebook. 
  • When you post things like photos or videos on Facebook, we may receive additional related data (or metadata), such as the time, date, and place you took the photo or video. 
  • We receive data from the computer, mobile phone or other device you use to access Facebook, including when multiple users log in from the same device. This may include your IP address and other information about things like your internet service, location, the type (including identifiers) of browser you use, or the pages you visit. For example, we may get your GPS or other location information so we can tell you if any of your friends are nearby. 
  • We receive data whenever you visit a game, application, or website that uses Facebook Platform or visit a site with a Facebook feature (such as a social plugin), sometimes through cookies. This may include the date and time you visit the site; the web address, or URL, you're on; technical information about the IP address, browser and the operating system you use; and, if you are logged in to Facebook, your User ID. 
  • Sometimes we get data from our advertising partners, customers and other third parties that helps us (or them) deliver ads, understand online activity, and generally make Facebook better. For example, an advertiser may tell us information about you (like how you responded to an ad on Facebook or on another site) in order to measure the effectiveness of - and improve the quality of - ads.
I get very nervous when I read that list, despite assurances that my information is shared only "after we have removed your name or any other personally identifying information from it."  It seems to me that the detail contained in the information makes it very personal indeed, whether my name is associated with it or not.  I note also that the use to which my information may be put is rather open-ended.  I really don't know the specific ways Facebook uses tracking information and so I just have to trust that it will be benign.

My issues with authority and control lead me to get nervous about another aspect of Facebook -- its tendency to try to keep me within its warm and fuzzy embrace.  For example, a recent unannounced move was for Facebook to change people's email addresses that they had listed in their public profiles to addresses that use a Facebook email account.  If a friend sends a message to me at earthlink.com, for instance, it gets delivered to my Facebook email account instead.  Another development is Facebook's "Open Graph" initiative to encourage users to install apps that function within the Facebook interface even though they utilize content from the broader internet.  For example, if a friend has posted a link to a Washington Post news article, clicking on that link doesn't take you to the Washington Post web site, but rather serves the article to you through a internal app that you must install within Facebook. Of course, keeping a user within the Facebook interface allows even more thorough tracking of online behavior.  Wired's Steven Johnson raised a broader and more philosophical objection in his article that resonates well with my personality quirks:
This reluctance to link to the outside is, to say the least, hard to reconcile with Zuckerberg’s paean to open connection. Hyperlinks are the connective tissue of the online world; breaking them apart with solicitations to download apps may make it easier to share data passively with your friends, but the costs—severing the link itself and steering people away from unlit corners of the web—clearly outweigh the gains. Surely we can figure out a way to share seamlessly without killing off the seamless surfing that has done so much for us over the past two decades.
In the meantime, I'll just keep hiding......