OpinionEver since Barack Obama mobilised his grass roots support in 2008, Facebook has been the No.1 route to get party messages across

Sunday, 17th November 2019, 11:33 am

During this General Election campaign we are able to monitor the political parties, like never before, as they target voters online with their claims, promises and downright propaganda.

The Facebook Ad Library is a genuine game changer. It sets out on a daily basis just how much each party and pressure group spends advertising on the platform and its sister site Instagram.

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In the past week, the Tories were the biggest party spenders, shelling out 86,023 on 71 ads (from the Conservative Party and Boris Johnson official accounts). Labour spent 43,428 on 183 ads and the Lib Dems 42,400 on a flurry of 1,829 different messages. But the group with the deepest pockets was the anti-Brexit campaign Best for Britain, which invested 84,014.

Since 2008, when Barack Obama mobilised his grass roots support on Facebook to win his way to the White House, this platform has been the key to election victory in America and Britain. Yet parties, lobby groups and foreign actors have been allowed to work there in the shadows.

Failure of the media

Thats partly a failure of the media, which since 2010 has been transfixed by televised debates, which are easier to report on. Its also a consequence of the might of the Silicon Valley companies, which grew so quickly that they could make up their own rules.

For journalists like Joe Tidy, the new Digital Elections Reporter for BBC News, it provides a brilliant resource in monitoring party activities online. It also helps fact-checking organisations, such as the charity Full Fact.

Facebook Ad Library breaks down ad spend according to age group and gender. Tidy notes that the Brexit Party is fully-focused on men over the age of 45, while the Tories are almost ignoring Scotland.

Facebook could be more transparent, revealing data on how parties target by constituency and the personal interests of users, from trade union membership to attending yoga classes, Tidy says.But it's better than Google, where scrutiny of political ad spending requires laborious analysis of complex spreadsheets.

Google Search is another key battlefield, with parties paying to advertise against keywords. Type in Boris Brexit Deal and the top result is an ad for the Brexit Party. There is a battle of the search bar taking place, says Tidy.

We didnt have the Ad Library for the 2017 General Election but it was clear that the Labour Party generated its Corbyn surge on social media, achieving unrivalled engagement in likes and shares for its official posts. But, below the radar, the Conservatives spent bigger on targeted online ads which were largely invisible to the news media, and this helped Theresa May to enter Number Ten.

Tories ahead on all platforms

This time, Tidy says, the Tories are ahead in terms of interactions on all three platforms (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter), according to data given to him by BBC Monitoring, the broadcasters media analysis unit.

Part of this high engagement has come from the the widespread sharing of an official Tory video, 12 Questions with Boris, in which the Prime Minister is followed around by a camera as he goes to make a cup of tea. He compares his Brexit deal to a ready meal (slam it in the microwave), and reveals that he likes Marmite and that he starts his day by taking his dog to do its business.

The wonky production values and oddball answers drew sneering responses from political opponents who likened Johnson to David Brent. But the Conservatives have paid to promote the film on Facebook and it has had more than 5 million views on social media. The Tory campaign is deliberately putting out cheesy or controversial stuff, Tidy believes. Its all about noise.

In the first week of the campaign, Tidy notes, Jeremy Corbyn and Labour dominated Twitter, with 16 of the top 20 most-engaged-with tweets. But Twitter is not where voters are wooed. CEO Jack Dorsey grandly banned political ads on the forum from 22 November, but political spending overwhelmingly goes on Facebook and Google.

Enjoy the new transparency while it lasts.

One area of the Facebook empire that remains opaque to scrutiny is the messaging app WhatsApp. Following pressure from regulators earlier this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested his company might become less open and more private, merging WhatsApp with its direct messaging services on Facebook and Instagram to create a giant encrypted network.

Ive got a hunch that this election is the most-enlightened we have ever had and it is possible the most-enlightened we will ever have, says Tidy. By the time we get to the next election a lot of these things are going to happen in private messaging.

Originally posted here:
What spending on social media ads tells us about the General Election - inews