Understanding political campaigns is a foundational goal for political scientists. The development of new campaign techniques, especially the use of "micro-targeting" strategies, challenges the fundamental understanding of how presidential campaigns influence our democracy. Unfortunately, social science has not been able to keep up with these developments in campaign tactics. Many basic science questions in political science have been unanswerable due to their massive data collection and data processing needs. In particular, election campaigns increasingly rely on online advertising to reach voters. In contrast to mass broadcast advertising, campaigns can now tailor specific messages for different types of voters. This "micro-targeting" has serious implications for how our elections and our democracy function. Unfortunately, data-driven, micro-targeted online advertisements cannot be studied systematically with the tools currently available. We need new automated tools for analyzing political campaign ads and campaign tactics. This project develops new computer algorithms and tools for political to collect data and test theories about campaign tactics.
Funding Organization: National Science Foundation
Award Amount: $529776.00
Award Number: 1729775
Principal Investigators: Wallapak Tavanapong Olga Chyzh Adisak Sukul