Continued developments in digital technologies have given rise to a new political modus operandi. Politically active groups around the globe are using tools and techniques from marketing, statistics, psychology to advance their agendas, to promote their campaigns, and to influence voters. As these political groups amass and leverage data on citizens, they increasingly adopt a corporate approach on data collection. This data-centric business model, which has transformed countless other domains, has become an inextricable part of modern-day politicking. We aim to explore what political entities are using what types of data, in what capacity, and ultimately what impact these changes have on the dignity of democratic processes.
This is a Tactical Technology Collective project.
Disclaimer: The sensitive nature of examining data practices within political parties and within electoral campaigns created some understandable constraints on the research by our partners. Our partners largely found that interviewees would only share information off-the-record and without attribution. For this reason, some of the findings had to be augmented with publicly available information and others by participant observation at industry conferences and presentations and first-hand technical reviews. Tactical Tech and the authors have made every effort to ensure that the information in this report is correct and appropriately sourced where possible.