Use of Social Media May be Undemocratic if It's Not Transparent - Advocate

Sputnik spoke with transparency advocate Liz Carolan to get her views on the revelation that a data firm owned by a prominent Brexit campaigner had been displaying Facebook adverts that directly targeted anti-Brexit Tory MPs and its possible impact on the voting public.

Sputnik: How much can social media influence voting patterns?

Liz Carolan: I think it can influence it hugely and we can see evidence of that to the extent that it is being used for political parties' campaigns. It's a very efficient way of trying to get key messages across audiences.

For example, here in Ireland with the yes equality, marriage equality referendum that we had three years ago now, it was actually a very small team who were leading the campaigning on that, with a relatively small budget,  but they were able to use social media to organise, to communicate with volunteers, to get a particular type of message across and that was something that could be done with a small amount of money, with basically one person in charge of all the social media.

I think it can be both effective and efficient for getting the message across. Especially if you compare it to having to run other types of ads.

Sputnik: Is the use of social media and online campaigning by politicians undemocratic?

Liz Carolan: I think that depends on the way that it's used. Social media like most things is a tool and the impact it has on democracy, depends on how we use it.   

In a way if you look at some of the social media led movements that have taken place at the moment, if we look at me too, Black Lives Matter, lots of things that are going on, it can allow for voices which might find it difficult to break through in traditional media to reach an audience and it can allow groups to organize in ways that are difficult to do offline.

I think the problem comes about when we think about the ways that we regulate our democracy ordinarily and if social media can stop us from doing it in that particular way. I’m thinking in particular about campaign financing, so both in the UK and Ireland, we both as countries have decided that we don’t want unlimited, anonymous pots of money influencing behavior.

We’ve both kinds of decided that we want campaigning to be done in a way that is open, that can be counted and fact-checked and misuse of social media platforms can be undemocratic if it prevents those regulations that we have from working properly.

We’ve seen this to an extent with use in micro-targeted adds and during campaigns both in the Brexit referendum, the Trump presidential campaign and here in Ireland at the moment, there is a big fear that this will be happening for the upcoming referendum that we’re going to be having on abortion rights.

Sputnik: Could these types of adverts be banned in the future?

Liz Carolan: I would like to see them regulated; I think that’s a very slippery slope in trying to suppress free speech and very difficult to do. What I would like to see is transparency around them to be mandated. I would like us to get to a point whereby nobody can target an ad at an individual, in such a way that the ad cannot be seen by people who can scrutinize it, who can challenge it and say whether or not it’s right or wrong and so people can follow the money and see who’s trying to influence campaigns.

I think there should be regulation, but not of speech, but enforcing transparency so that we’re all able to get a full picture of how campaigns are behaving and I think this will influence people to behave better.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.