REMOVE THE MANIPULATION

I watched the documentary ‘The Great Hack’ on Netflix. It follows the Guardian’s investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr and others, investigating the role of Cambridge Analytica especially with regards to the 2016 UK Brexit referendum (Leave.EU) and the US Election. Also focuses on the role of Facebook in enabling the harvesting of the data and the ways in which the platform was used to manipulate the targeted populace.

It highlights the ease in which not only our information can be taken but also how willingly we give it (everyone loves doing a quick survey or finding out their unicorn name!). It highlights how the required technology is already in place and working in ways we don’t fully understand.   It shows how easily some of our basic emotions (like fear and anger) can be manipulated by targeted propaganda in order to get us to respond in a desired way. The example (given by Alexander Nix, former CEO of Cambridge Analytica) regarding the manipulation of participation in the 2009 Trinidad and Tobago campaign is fascinating not only because it appears that they were so effective with their techniques but also in the way that individuals bought into the movement that was created and became completely predicable.

It would be a naive person who thought that there was no media manipulation within Western democracies – the political and personality bias is usually fairly evident nowadays within most media sources. However, the ability to produce propaganda, without any branding or traceability, that can be individually directed into our online realities would appear to support some of the more sensational phrases used in the documentary: ‘killing democracy’; ‘information warfare in elections’; ‘end of free and fair elections’; ‘hijacking of democracy’.  

For me the documentary raises questions around the role of personal responsibility or institutional intervention. Should there be a greater emphasis on individuals being better educated in political matters to ensure informed voting decisions or should greater institutional controls be put in place to stop any attempts to use media or data in manipulative ways? Education reduces gullibility; regulations can produce restrictions. If democracy is linked with civil liberties and particular freedoms (freedom of press, expression and electoral participation) surely education is a better focus than regulations?  Would that not be a way to combat the perceived decline of democracy – having a populace that can assimilate and discriminate information/propaganda to a level that increases the percentage of participation that is informed rather than manipulated.  Regulations have their place but if democracy is slipping towards more authoritarian models, then regulations can be gradually altered in order to entrench power to the incumbent’s advantage and remove any potential for freedom of the press.