Nature has a short article on a social experiment run during the 2010 presidential campaign. Basically, the researchers used social media to advertise particular candidates. They wanted to see if social media networks were strong enough that hearing about candidates who were seemingly "endorsed" by friends would induce someone to vote. "Here we report results from a randomized controlled trial of political
mobilization messages delivered to 61 million Facebook users during the
2010 US congressional elections. The results show that the messages
directly influenced political self-expression, information seeking and
real-world voting behaviour of millions of people. Furthermore, the
messages not only influenced the users who received them but also the
users’ friends, and friends of friends." (link)
So......expect to get targeted messages through Facebook and other social media during this election. Does the experiment seem ethical? Do you feel manipulated? Is this different than standard advertising practices? Should we care?
The first thing that jumps out to me here is a concern. Did the researchers conclude that if a facebook user "liked' a candidates page and showed support, that they then voted for them? With technology being at our finger tips it is easy for people to electronically pledge their support, but then not actually take any action. As with the downfall of myspace and facebook's inability to swoon major companies such as GM to pay for advertising on their site, social media has not yet proven itself reliable. With this type of experiment I expect the voluntary response bias to be high. Those people who later responded to the experimenters about their vote would have been a small percentage. Most of the people charged up about the election were going to vote for the candidate they pledged support to anyway, but this is hard to distinguish from data gathering using this method. The campaigns however surely will use social media, but simply because they don't want to take the chance of missing out. I do not see that being the swing in the election.
ReplyDeleteI do not think that people are as manipulated by seeing all of the political Facebook postings as they might think. In researching my SIP I found out that people are more than twice as likely to choose a local business from the Yellow Pages than they are to chose one from social media advertising. The average American still doesn't hold a high amount of trust for the ads they see on social media sites. Another thing that I found out from my SIP research was that it is pretty easy for the average human to block out all of those ads on the sides of webpages that are constantly bombarding the viewer. That being said, I understand why political candidates are choosing spend a chunk of their budget advertising through social media because peer pressure is alive in our society, however I think that plenty of social media users will simply ignore these ads.
ReplyDeleteThis method should not be considered reliable at all. Like Travis said, it is easy to electronically pledge support, but then not actually taking any action. The power that social networks, especially Facebook, have this days is alarming. People can literally manipulate others to liking a page. It could be safe to assume that the reason why the friends of the voters also liked the page is because of peer pressure and the "not wanting to feel left out" feeling, the fact that Facebook shows who has liked the page is enough to argue that people will vote if they see that their best friend did so. This results are not very useful.
ReplyDeleteThe experiment is ethical because it is not doing anything wrong, aside from thinking/assuming the results are a reflection of what will happen on voting day. I don't think people felt manipulated to like this page but probably pressured, which means that you can't be completely sure that is who they are voting for.
I am also very interested in finding out if Travis is correct in his questioning of whether or not a "like" equates to a vote. If this is the case, I also wonder if there was any way for them to distinguish between someone who liked a certain political page because of the ads, or if they had heard about the social media page from another source and directly searched for it themselves. As far as ethics go, I cannot blame them for using this strategy. Never in the history of advertising/marketing have we ever had such a large, readily available, platform for marketers to use. The amount of potential that sites like Facebook and Twitter offer for exposure is enormous, and these campaign groups are simply cashing in on that potential.
ReplyDeleteI also have to doubt the validity of the study, even if the results seem pretty predictable. I would not be at all surprised to find out that that politicians are advertising on social media, or that the ads are effective. It makes sense that a targeted advertisement would be a good way of reaching youth voters, and possibly on the issues that they care about. My major concern with these ads is that it makes politicians potentially a lot less accountable for the things they say in their ads. One might imagine that scathing and possibly untrue ads could slip through the cracks of watchdogs while still influencing the way that people vote.
ReplyDeleteFacebook is truly a microcosm of our less pixelated, day-to-day world. It does not surprise me at all that this will be a tangible part of the website in the upcoming election. However the effect of 'friends' and their relative influence to choice does stand-out through its power.
ReplyDeleteWe look at Facebook through its power as a pure social media site. We know how to spot out advertisements as a society, and most of use tend to place appropriate skepticism where its due. But with Facebook, we read the information that filters through it as we would factually receive information from face-to-face from a friend.
Take the case and point of the recent problems with "social rating" sites like Travelocity, Angie's List, Yelp, etc. Research pointed to a plethora of scammer accounts, set up by insiders to write biasedly about particular businesses. People read those reviews and connect with them, because they operate under the impression that that individual writing is someone just like them. There is a connection there that influences someone more powerfully than an advertisement ever could.
Back to Facebook, with reading endorsements and 'friend'ly statements about candidates--its very possible that this same power could be corralled by political groups. If we read friend political posts, and they affect us stronger than plain adversisments, you can believe someone will find a way to tie these two concepts together eventually.
I agree with everyone who stated that these results do not seem very reliable. I'd like to know more about how they came to these conclusions. I also do not think that this is as effective as they claim. You can "like" a post, but it takes a lot more effort to do it in person. I don't feel manipulated, because I believe this is a smart move to post in social media, its proves effective. But, I do think I need to know more about the study, how they came to their results, etc., in order to really support their claim.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everyone who stated that these results do not seem very reliable. I'd like to know more about how they came to these conclusions. I also do not think that this is as effective as they claim. You can "like" a post, but it takes a lot more effort to do it in person. I don't feel manipulated, because I believe this is a smart move to post in social media, its proves effective. But, I do think I need to know more about the study, how they came to their results, etc., in order to really support their claim.
ReplyDeleteI don't think this there is a problem with doing something like this but I agree with everyone that these results are not reliable. A lot of people on facebook possibly can't or won't vote in the election and just because they like someone doesn't mean they actually voted for that person. I don't think it manipulates anyone really, its just another way to campaign and staying with the time these days. Everything is so technological and everyone it seems like is on facebook so its a relatively easy way to get to people. It is different than standard practices but, as stated, everyone seems to be on the internet these days so it is probably a smart move on their part to go that route.
ReplyDeleteI do not see a problem with candidates reaching out like this through facebook. It is expected that they are going to try and reach the highest amount of people possible. Logically they would be looking to social networks. I dont feel like this manipulates a person than any advertisement. This isnt really any different from advertisements that we see today. I also dont think that this is a real cause for concern.
ReplyDelete