Online Political Microtargeting: Promises and Threats for Democracy
🤖 AI Summary
This study examines the dual democratic implications of online political microtargeting: while enhancing alignment between voter concerns and political issues—and thereby boosting perceived political efficacy—it simultaneously exacerbates risks of disinformation, algorithmic polarization (i.e., filter bubbles), and privacy violations. Methodologically, it integrates real-time web behavioral tracking with multi-source data fusion and conducts empirically grounded, compliance-oriented analysis under the EU’s legal framework—particularly GDPR and the Digital Services Act—to assess the communicative impact and fundamental rights tensions arising from targeted political advertising. The contribution is a novel “tiered regulatory framework” that upholds freedom of expression while mandating transparency obligations, algorithmic explainability, and strict prohibitions on the use of sensitive personal data in political targeting. The findings deliver a legally robust and technically implementable policy pathway for digital election governance in Europe, effectively balancing democratic resilience, individual rights protection, and platform accountability.
Application Category
📝 Abstract
Online political microtargeting involves monitoring people's online behaviour, and using the collected data, sometimes enriched with other data, to show people-targeted political advertisements. Online political microtargeting is widely used in the US; Europe may not be far behind. This paper maps microtargeting's promises and threats to democracy. For example, microtargeting promises to optimise the match between the electorate's concerns and political campaigns, and to boost campaign engagement and political participation. But online microtargeting could also threaten democracy. For instance, a political party could, misleadingly, present itself as a different one-issue party to different individuals. And data collection for microtargeting raises privacy concerns. We sketch possibilities for policymakers if they seek to regulate online political microtargeting. We discuss which measures would be possible, while complying with the right to freedom of expression under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Mapping promises and threats of online political microtargeting to democracy
Analyzing how microtargeting affects political engagement and voter manipulation
Exploring regulatory measures for microtargeting while protecting freedom of expression
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Monitoring online behavior for data collection
Using collected data for targeted political ads
Sketching regulatory measures for policymakers
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