A series of whistleblowers, journalistic investigations and public inquiries this year have reinforced concerns academics like me have had for some time about the rapid development of highly manipulative communication technologies. As our online activities are increasingly monitored and monetized, and we are being made more vulnerable to powerful actors abusing data for propaganda targeting.
This is enabled by digital platforms and influence industry applications that consumers trust, and which obscure their central purpose as part of their business model. Following questions of manipulation during Brexit and Trump campaigns inquiries interrogated the respective roles of: the campaigns themselves; foreign actors such as Russia; digital media platforms; influence industry companies and their business models and methodologies. Now US Senator Mark Warner and the Fake News Inquiry in the UK have come up with some helpful solutions for the problem of ‘fake news’ and digital campaign practices that may undermine democracy… how well do these address the problem at hand? Well, these proposals largely focus on: Information Operations (IO) and coordinated responses to Russia; privacy and transparency measures largely focused on encouraging better behavior from digital platforms like Facebook; and providing public media education.
The extent to which platforms like Facebook are complicit has been central to media debates, to the neglect of other aspects of the problem. Scholarly proposals rightly emphasize a need to address the monopoly of these platforms. Some (Baron et al 2017; Freedman, 2018; Tambini, 2017, for example) say forcing data portability, whereby users are able to take their data to competitors, might reduce the monopoly power enjoyed by Facebook.
Privacy measures like GDPR and other measures aimed at platforms would certainly be helpful. However, a central question has been neglected by media and reports and yet is all the more urgent as we plan for upcoming elections in the UK and US – this concerns the influence industry and how government contracting helped create Cambridge Analytica and its parent company SCL. If UK and US responses are likely to include more propaganda or ‘information operations’ (IO), to counter Russia, it is unfortunate that both reports fail to address the fact the company central to the scandal emerged out of this kind of contracting work for US and UK governments and NATO. My submission to the Fake News Inquiry from my academic research helped expose this link and indicated problems which seem to be largely unaddressed by recent proposals.
Policymakers must consider whether oversight and intelligence mechanisms were adequate as they failed to identify or prevent a developing problem. We must write to them demanding they make these necessary changes to ensure there can be no recurring issues with another contractor.
Our governments share responsibility for the Cambridge Analytica crisis… and here’s how they should fix it
13 January 2024
Originally Published here in in January 2024
