Digital Strategy

#169: Data-Driven Campaigning: How Political Campaigns use Data, Analytics, and Technology, with Prof. Kate Dommett and Dr. Simon Kruschinski

Prof. Kate Dommett, Professor of Digital Politics at the University of Sheffield, and Dr. Simon Kruschinski, Postdoctoral Researcher in Communication at the University of Mainz, discuss their new book: Data-Driven Campaigning and Political Parties.

 

We discuss the book’s theoretical framework on how system-level, regulatory-level, and party-level factors explain variation in data-driven campaigning across five democracies: the US, UK, Canada, Germany, and Australia. 

 

Prof. Dommett and Dr. Kruschinski also break down their findings on how data, analytics, targeting, and personnel differ across these five cases, and how regulation might need to focus on broader structures in the electoral system to minimize the potential harms of campaign practices. 

#168: China’s Digital Strategy for Information Control, with Dr. Andrew MacDonald

Dr. Andrew W. MacDonald, Assistant Professor of Social Science at Duke Kunshan University, shares research from his new book Directed Digital Dissidence in Autocracies: How China Wins Online. 

 

We discuss the Chinese digital and social media context, citizens’ perceptions of online propaganda, and how the state manipulates digital information to further its political interests.

 

We also discuss survey methodology, how citizens circumvent the Great Firewall, and what affect using the internet and VPNs has on trust in the state.