This essay is concerned with the regulation of political
advertising online in order to ensure the integrity of elections. It asks what
political and digital media entities will need to be considered and the
questions that regulation will need to address. This report highlights the
continued lack of clarity regarding the scale and nature of online political
advertising. Recent elections and referenda have been undermined by the
large-scale manipulation of the digital environment, where most voters now get
their news and political information.
Given the examples of elections and referendums marred by
questions of disinformation and manipulation, a range of digital media and
advertising companies have committed to the Code of Practice on Disinformation.
Each have submitted regular reports on efforts to address issues such as bots,
transparency in funding digital campaigns, and the promotion of problematic
content. This report and the wider work of ERGA as well as reports by Mozilla
and the Office of the French Ambassador for Digital Affairs offer more clarity
as to what specific information is required by election monitors to ensure they
can appropriately investigate to uphold the public interest.
This report clearly shows the need for enhanced transparency from
digital media companies. One of the core challenges of this, and related
research, was that it was limited to analysing only the adverts the companies
defined as political. It was not possible to systematically analyse a complete database
of adverts to establish what may have been omitted and to understand why. This
is a critical blind spot in the transparency efforts by digital media
companies. While the political advertising archives help address some issues,
they leave others unaddressed and point to new areas in need of further
investigation.
The time has come to initiate more focused discussions about what
this regulation should look like and to establish what information we should
compel political organisations and social media companies to disclose. While
some of the social media companies offer some information on political advertising,
Irish national regulatory structures could address a wide range of issues. This
and be achieved by requesting political parties, campaigners and donors to
disclose detailed information on how they advertise online. Moreover, the
evident challenges posed by the varying approaches to classifying political and
issue-based advertising by just three social media companies underlines the need
for a standardised approached across social media companies if election media
monitoring is to be achievable.
Given the ease of creativity afforded by digital software, one of
the first challenges that any national regulators will have to consider is what
exactly constitutes political advertising online? In the analogue era, it was
easier to define. For example, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) have
clear guidelines26 on what constitutes a political broadcast. But
in the digital era paying for political advertising can take on many forms,
such as paying companies or employing ad content specialists, to paying for
editing an image or bots to liking a post on website like ‘Fivrr’.
Facebook and Google between them own a substantial number of the
top ten social networks in Ireland, but ads were placed on other platforms such
as Spotify. And there are a range of other platforms where ads can be placed
and more will no doubt emerge and many social networks have not agreed to the
Code of Practice on Disinformation. This indicates another structural
blindspot. European-wide voluntary regulation would need to be supported by
national measures compelling political organisations to be appropriately
transparent.
The responsibility to uphold the integrity of elections and choose
who gets to participate in political campaigns via these platforms lies with
governments. But states arbitrating on what should be available in the digital
public sphere is highly problematic. On one hand, such measures leave too much
authority in the hands of the state with implications for democracy. And on the
other, the slow instructional process of legislation and policy development
makes is undesirable. However, a powerful arbiter is one that is independent of
both state and private entity, that can mediate between the two while holding
both to account and can act in the public interest.
Addressing social media and providing more information to ERGA
Neither Google nor Twitter labelled issue-based advertising at all
over the election period, and their political advertising archives did not
offer enough insight to ensure electoral integrity in this regard. Given that
voting patterns can indicate the centralisation of certain issues, such as
environmental issues or immigration, it is necessary for countries to establish
who is buying advantage for their political messages. Issue-based adverts were
most likely to run without a disclaimer and without the payer information on
Facebook. This indicates that these types of adverts are the most vulnerable to
coordinated manipulation. In the current format, it is not possible to
establish if online advertising is being used to manipulate public perceptions
of issues, or political parties and candidates that do or do not support such
issues. This is precisely what we need to know.
We also found that Facebook, Google and Twitter tend to present
some information in aggregated form or as a summary when what is required is
more detail. For example, spending information tends to be reported as a total
over a period, rather than spend per advert, which would facilitate a better
understanding of increases and decreases in spends before and during elections.
To meet the commitment to ensure electoral integrity requires improvement on
the degree of transparency on a number of areas. All three platforms should
provide information in such a way that allows election monitors to easily establish
the volume of advertising over a defined period. This includes detailed information
on the pages that adverts appear on, who funds them, and the issue-based
adverts labelled with the specific issue of importance. Additionally, this
information should be provided in a format that is easily analysed from a
number of perspectives.
What we can do nationally to supplement EU codes?
While Facebook, Google and Twitter have made some efforts to
enhance transparency regarding political advertising, Irish national regulators
and political parties could do substantially more to codify and produce
suitable information regarding their production, purchase and distribution of
advertising
online. In the case of the European elections in Ireland, this
report found that often the sponsors of adverts were primarily political
parties or candidates. However, there were many examples of names and entities
paying for political adverts that had no apparent connection to the
beneficiary. This poses a question for regulation to consider: who should be
allowed to pay for advertising?
The production and services required to effectively produce high
quality content for social media and the investment in services to enhance the
reach of adverts across platforms can be substantive. Regulation needs to
consider whether there should be a requirement for political organisations to
disclose the spending on content production and distribution. There is an
urgent need for the Standards in Public Office Commission to set clear
guidelines regarding who may pay for advertising (party candidates, official
accountants, communications managers or any party member?) and the disclosure
of names and amounts spent on content creation and distribution.
The
Irish national regulator, where possible, should require more detailed
disclosure of a political party’s or candidate’s campaign spending including a
list of all digital and analogue platforms: how much has been spent per advert;
for how long was the advertising scheduled to run, and how much was spent on
content creation; were micro-targeting options used to either target or exclude
demographics; and how many official political party, local branch and candidate
pages are on different social media platforms? By requiring more detailed
information from political parties, regulation will also facilitate better
identification and the ability to address national and international malicious actors.
Ireland
is a small media market where it is challenging to sustain individual and
independent monitoring initiatives. Considering this, the best approach may be
through collaborative networks of interdisciplinary monitors, researchers,
fact-checkers, investigators, and open-source intelligence (OSINT) groups with
a public face that can engage in best practice for public interest communication.
Other markets - for example, in the UK, USA and across Europe - have a number
of public interest institutions (such as NGO initiatives, independent
fact-checking and verification organisations, media monitoring and research
groups) already in operation. In the UK the Digital, Culture Media and Sports
Committee’s report into Disinformation and Fake News27 was pivotal in securing further transparency
from Facebook regarding political advertising during the Brexit Referendum in
2016. Such initiatives are regarded as vital public resources and essential
part of the digital infrastructure required for democratic societies. However,
recognising that this is a smaller media market, to tackle problems that arise
in the information ecology, pooling expertise and skills in an independent
project can be of benefit.
The
desire and ability to evade the regulation or measures introduced by social
media companies limits the effectiveness of such efforts. Where regulation
presents a barrier, malicious actors develop ways to overcome them. Something
that can respond to new problems in a meaningful way must be implemented. To
address the fast evolution of evasion techniques, and to monitor the practices
of malicious actors, a range of safety nets that uphold the quality of the
information environment should be developed. Ad
hoc volunteer efforts cannot achieve what
is required to comprehensively address the range of problems that are
developing in the digital environment. In Ireland, there is a pressing need to develop
a media monitor that can combine the skills and expertise needed to address
these problems such as OSINT, fact-checking and verification source tracking,
image and video manipulation expertise, emerging technologies such as
blockchain. For too long now research and industry has recognised that
regulation is needed, it is high time to start discussing what specifically
this might look like and ensure that it, above all, works best for the public.
