In this section, I am looking at how politics is using digital, direct & data-driven marketing and manipulation, propaganda, and gaslighting through behavioral communication techniques in today's world.
Challenging the narratives and misuse of big data and data science within the political sphere.
It is polling time again soon in the UK and who are you going to vote for? Do you know? Have you made up your mind? Or are you going to listen to what's said and make and “informed decision?”
Is that even possible in today’s world? Can you make sense of all the noise? If we put aside for one moment the rhetoric and hyperbole from each of the main party front liners and their spin doctors, which are bad enough, and we listen to the media pundits, bloggers, podcasters and YouTubers can we define what is real or not. What are the right issues to focus on and be concerned about and what are just sensationalism?
If that alone weren’t enough we know we are up against the likes of Cambridge Analytica, albeit they may have gone but plenty of contenders for the role no doubt remain even if in the shadows. Then there are the Information Operations (state-sponsored, foreign and fundamentalist), Hackers and Crackpots. The political technologist, behavioural economists, dark advertisers and data scientists all trying to understand you, manipulate you and nudge your vote one way or the other. All battling for your attention and all willing to lie, cheat and steal your data to get to the top. And you willing let them do it, because you think it has no effect on you. And maybe it doesn’t, but it affects enough people to sway votes and shake nations so unless you sit up and take notice it's going to be running part of your life, if not your entire life from now on.
It’s hard to make sense of what is going on when we get our news and views from social media, mobile phone news feeds and glimpses we get from our various digital ecosystems. With these bad actors and political propagandists able to access your data and use machine learning and AI to predict your next move digitally it is hard to know where to turn to find “truth” whatever that looks like today.
We used to get our news from the broadsheets, the radio and the TV screen, but that too was always biased. Even the so-called impartial BBC shows its true colours every now and then but quickly backtracks when called out by others.
To get a true view of what each political party and their candidates believe its best to go straight to their own respective websites. It is up to you then if you choose to believe and trust in what they say they will do and if it aligns with your beliefs and values.
As for the media and all the various vacuous form of digital ecosystem exposure you fall into each day the only advice we can give is to;
Don’t just take at face value what you see. In my article on Tackling Information Operations, Propaganda and Dark Advertising we can see just how widespread and diverse the problem of misinformation is in this digital age that our only hope is to be our own sense makers. But it takes time, it takes series consideration and it takes stepping away from our digital devices long enough to think clearly.
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by Sam I Am > cyberpunk storyteller 👺 | digital, data-driven and behavioural marketing specialist | mentalist noise maker | that black hat SEO guy | unpicking systems of coercion & control | a belief in the power of story | writer | poet | Ai story artist | high tech (Ai) low life (human) | with a pinch of Pictish chaos magick
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Sleepless Dystopian has been the home to Cyberpunk Dystopian writer, storyteller, mischief maker, and behavioural digital and data-driven marketing specialist Sam I Am for around 10 years. Mainly, it has been my dumping ground for my half-written, half-baked projects and my ranting of a political nature.
Now, though, I want to start getting serious here, to make some money from my creative outputs and to offer my services to fellow creatives, activists, and campaigners.
The idea is to create an Indie Publishing and Marketing service. It is a work in progress, but as a Cyberpunk, I want to hack the systems of undue influence and coercive persuasion, turn them on their heads, and use them for good.
This site is also a social network, so you can join it for free and join me on the journey as I rediscover what I am doing here with new meaning and purpose.
Check out my Substack Book Projects, sign up to them to get the latest updates, and when the book is launched you will be sent a link to a free Kindle copy.
