Is the use of artificial intelligence in election campaigns a trap for voters?

“Nothing in politics happens by accident. If it did, it was planned that way”.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

(32nd President of the United States)

Social media in Political Communication:

Political communication is an activity that covers the process of directing voting behavior by influencing the attitudes of individuals. Political communication is the use of various communication types and techniques in order to impose the ideological aims of political actors on certain individuals, groups, masses, countries or blocs and to transform them into action when necessary.

Political parties, keeping up with the current communication technology, started to use the internet and the social media tools that came with internet technology during the political campaigns. Today, almost every political party employs a social media specialist working under the social media department, and they actively carry out political communication activities, especially during election periods, in order to convey the information they want when and in any form, to get feedback from the target audience and to communicate online.

In terms of political communication, unlike traditional media, the internet allows users to interactively recycle and produce content. Since the advertisements of political parties and candidates on the internet do not require large budgets as in television broadcasts, the voters can access information from the party website when they want to be informed. Thanks to the internet and social media, voters and politicians provide mutual communication and interaction.

In addition, new media enable to run less costly, faster, more successful and interactive campaigns in the political communication environment, unlike traditional election campaigns. In the election campaigns carried out with traditional political communication tools, it caused the party with a large budget to be more involved in the media agenda than the party with a low budget, and enabled it to communicate more effectively with the voters. At this point, the websites of the parties eliminate the inequality because it enables the small-budget parties to communicate with the electorate on an equal basis with the big-budget parties.

Use of Various Media Tools:

The internet, which is a product of information and communication technologies, has changed the field of political communication as well as every field. In the historical development of election campaigns, new technologies have always been a factor that determines the success of the campaigns. According to Andrew Chadwick, professor of political communication, platforms such as Twitter, Facebook or Instagram are not only communication tools, but also perform political assembly and protest roles during elections or important events. Because the algorithmic nature of these platforms has begun to shape, increasingly influencing political messaging, information seeking, and citizen participation. Social media are inevitably automated systems that monitor and manage connections. For example, Facebook is not a passive platform that connects friends and relatives. As a living and breathing political actor who actively collects personal information from its users and sells it to third parties, as in the Cambridge Analytics scandal, it can use its data for targeted advertising, micro-profiling and political behavior analysis.

Twitter, Amazon, Netflix, and other algorithmic platforms are similarly built on the collection and use of massive amounts of granular human data, which are used to profile and catalog the behavior patterns of societies.

2008 American Presidential Elections:

The success of Barack Obama, who won the US presidential election in 2008, was influenced by the correct use of the opportunities offered by internet technology, together with the campaign plans and strategies prepared by his advisers. The Obama campaign not only used methods such as e-mail and internet advertisements, which we can describe as traditional for that period, but also tried to benefit from all kinds of online platforms where its voters could interact. During the campaign, social media platforms such as Digg, Flikr, LinkedIn, and MiGente were actively used in addition to Facebook. By purchasing virtual advertising spaces from a game company called Electronic Arts, Obama advertisements were placed on billboards in video games. By using YouTube extensively, videos were prepared for voters and voters were encouraged to create their own videos. The campaign's own social media application, myBO, provided registered users with many different opportunities, such as telephone banking and volunteer coordination. The biggest success of this campaign, which brought Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008, was the individual-oriented approach while using a new communication tool to mobilize the masses.

Why and How Is Artificial Intelligence Used in Political Elections?

Although the concept of the artificial intelligence and robotic technologies is identified with robotic technologies in the minds of many people, today it mostly refers to smart software used for processing and making meaningful big data. Artificial intelligence is also in the field of interest of social sciences such as ethics, psychology, economics, communication, linguistics, sociology and law. Artificial intelligence is actually an algorithm, which means the path to be followed in solving a problem. It consists of writing the solution of the problem in steps. In other words, artificial intelligence is the thinking and learning of a machine or computer program. The general name of the algorithms that a machine or computer program creates by modeling a given problem according to the data obtained from the environment of the problem is called machine learning. The purpose of producing an artificial intelligence is to gain the ability to learn based on what has been given to it, to evaluate the new data it has obtained by analyzing what it has learned and to make a decision according to the results of the evaluation.

Data Usage:

New concepts such as "data democracy", "data citizenship", "data activism" and "data-driven election campaigns" have started to emerge, especially with the availability and use of large numbers and types of information through digital systems. In Turkey, until now, the focus has been on how social media is used in the election processes, but as the 2023 elections approach, I believe that the understanding of "data-driven political campaigns" will come to the fore and will be discussed more in political communication. Because election policies are now integrated with the ever-growing global, commercial, digital, media and marketing ecosystem. It is not difficult to predict that political campaign studies will continue to evolve, making use of the latest techniques in marketing and advertising technology.

Internet and Data Usage:

The spread of the Internet has reshaped the data under different categories, creating a basis for the use of user-oriented data on the one hand, and making it easier to reach more people in a short time with "network analysis", on the other hand. Data is the basic resource of the information society. Taking advantage of the wealth of information offered by the data, increasing visibility by controlling algorithms, determining the sharing and social media flow, turning into a more visit platform on the internet and using this data are important factors for political campaigns.

The main purpose of using data in today's modern campaigns is to predict the future regarding the election result and to reach the list with the potential to vote and to be able to contact the people on this list. In this sense, the data-driven election campaign approach uses large-scale datasets to reach specific audiences, convey messages and increase the impact of messages, and contributes to more successful and effective results in political campaigns. Because social media is seen not only as a means of communication or so-called socialization, but also as a means of reaching and understanding the behavioral data of its users. This technical and consumer database, which is used by agencies in the advertising industry to reach consumer data and measure their online behavior, is used in the political campaigns process.

Data Driven Political Election Campaigns:

Data-driven political election campaigns generally use micro-targeting. While determining the target, it is decided which messages should be conveyed to which potential voters during the campaign process. Data collection, which is an important process, is provided. While collecting data, previous election results, voting records, population data, party or campaign databases, social media data, data about consumers' lifestyles, social graph data, algorithmic groupings, etc. Numerous data sources are available. Generally, political parties use past election results as their main database. However, today, there are various methods and systems for collecting, analyzing and using data. Now, data, that is, personal data of people, are collected more easily through special software on smart phones, and the collected data is automatically transferred to the service point by connecting to the WLAN access point. Using this data, models for predictions are created by data experts and team members who are competent in the field in political campaigns. With the models created, test studies are carried out on how citizens will react to and manage campaign activities.

Data Driven Campaign:

Data-driven campaigning is a process that emerges and develops with big data, and its examples are mostly seen in the USA. For example, micro-targeting strategy was used for the first time in Bush's 2004 campaign and it was successful. Later, in Obama's 2008 election campaign, microtargeting strategy. He used it and was successful. The reason why both campaigns are successful is that the data is correctly correlated and analyzed between different variables.

How successful was Obama's campaign strategy in the 2012 Presidential elections?

Obama's opponent, McCain, focused on mass media and conducted an election campaign in the traditional sense. Romney, one of the candidates, actively used digital platforms such as Square, Eventbrigh and Facebook in his election campaign and benefited from YouTube and Hulu for advertisements. What did Obama do differently from other candidates? Together with Obama's campaign manager Jim Messina, he established a social media site called "2012 Dashboard". This site offered functions such as volunteering, mobility and participation to citizens. It was the time when smartphones were rapidly becoming widespread, and he implemented the text message tactic so that supporters could make small donations easily. Obama's campaign team, which has 33 million Facebook and 22 million Twitter followers, performed statistical analyzes and created neighborhood-level groups in the digital media strategy, and all users were placed in neighborhood groups on the Dashboard site. People from the same neighborhood or region could also see who supported Obama with photos and videos. Profile information of their friends in contested constituencies were sent via message to Obama followers on Facebook and encouraged to vote for Obama. This is the first time that the micro-targeting strategy with data usage has been used in this way and has been effective.

2016 American Election Campaign:

In the 2016 Presidential elections, Trump achieved success with the effective use of data and accurate target group determination in the data-driven election campaign he carried out. Facebook shared the electoral personal data of its users living in America with Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica analyzed and classified this data using artificial intelligence. He then prepared Trump's election campaigns for each state voter using this classification. After a while, even the abstention votes and the votes supporting the opposing candidate turned in favor of Trump. During the election campaign, it was ensured that advertisements containing positive perceptions of Trump and negative perceptions of Clinton were displayed on Facebook. The data-driven microtargeting strategy, which started in the USA with Bush and Obama, was later implemented in the UK and Germany. As in the examples of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, determining the target audience correctly in political election campaigns is one of the most important stages of campaign work. The target audience is the voter groups that the campaign management aims to get their votes in order to win the election. Target audience detection can be done at macro and micro levels.

Ability to Identify Target Audiences Correctly:

The target audiences at the macro level are the more general constituencies determined by considering the demographic structure or the electorate structure. At the micro level, the target audience is as narrow as possible. For example, a family or each elector themselves can be microelements. The important point here is that the more a political party can identify a target audience on a micro scale, the more it will have the opportunity to send the right messages to the right individuals, persuade them and thus get better results. While determining the target audience in the elections, it is important and necessary to correctly determine from whom votes can be obtained and to create a voter coalition profile accordingly in order to achieve successful results. Which voter groups will take place in this coalition can only be determined as a result of general measurement studies, surveys, focus groups or one-on-one interviews conducted before the campaign. As a result, the target audience is determined by determining which voters can get support and who the undecided voters are, and messages and slogans are written by shaping the campaign theme according to the expectations and needs of this audience.

Data Collection by Social Media Usage:

The fact that it is easy to collect data on the attitudes and behaviors of voters makes social media very important for election campaigns. By seeing and accepting the user agreements on social media platforms without reading them by clicking, we consent to the sharing of our personal data with third parties for advertising purposes. Thanks to artificial intelligence technology and smart software, which is not enough, not only the personal information provided, but also the shares, likes and comments of users, which are their reactions to current events, are measured and evaluated as data. Thanks to data collection methods, election campaign managers can develop election strategies for very small groups and communities.

However, the collection of this shared data and its use by political parties is an ethical problem because issues such as personal privacy and security are important. For example, time flow 

The “dark post” strategy, which aims to change voting habits with the posts seen on the internet, is a model that aims to convince the recipient of the message by activating emotions such as fear, hope, prejudice and attraction.

Is the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Elections a Threat?

In addition, the target audience election campaign understanding from Artificial Intelligence data is interpreted as a threat to the integrity of democratic elections. Why is that?

Online political microtargeting is becoming more and more widespread. In a political context, microtargeting is a manipulative understanding and practice, and the influence of microtargeting on selection is difficult to prove.
Political actors trying to discredit and discredit their opponents try to win the election with social bots and fake videos, which tarnishes the legitimacy of democracy and causes the public to lose faith in democratic procedures. In conclusion, considering that a significant portion of social media accounts are fake or artificial intelligence products, it turns out that this new application itself is a big problem.

Is Every Way OK?

Today, election campaigns are implemented with an understanding that pushes all the limits of unwritten ethical rules and considers every way possible to win. New communication technologies and social media make such unethical and dirty campaigns even easier. With the development of communication technologies, the methods and techniques of persuading the voters are constantly changing. Today, we are in a process that transforms from persuading the masses to persuading individuals. The use of Artificial Intelligence technologies to manipulate voters has created problems and will create even greater problems in the future. It will be inevitable to carry out studies to control the moral limits of microtargeting and the use of technology in election campaigns.

Conclusion

We can no longer say that “the key point of being in power or staying in power is the voters” because the electorate is manipulated with all kinds of tricks. It wants to use all its powers and authorities to the end, whether with the change in the election law or with the campaign strategies carried out in the election campaign, in order to maintain the power in the hands of the government.

For example, the new election law, which is being tried to be enacted for the elections to be held in 2023, has started to be discussed a lot on social media these days, and it will be discussed even more. It is not unmistakable that the government is linked to the election campaign strategy that it plans to implement in the 2023 elections to amend the electoral law. The groundwork for the applicability of the "data-driven political election campaigns" approach, which has been proven successful in the USA before, is being prepared in our country. All analyzes and mathematical calculations have been made and all obstacles on the way to success are wanted to be removed.

References:

https://turk-internet.com/yapay-zeka-ve-secim-sonuclari-tahmini/

https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/259106

https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/1778256

https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/1318325

https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/1483973