Voters are being pushed into “political bubbles” - or turned away from politics altogether - by personalised communications known as microtargeting, an expert has told The Scotsman’s Data Capital podcast.
Professor Oliver Escobar, Chair of Public Policy and Democratic Innovation at The University of Edinburgh, says the trend is part of the “marketisation of elections” - and outlines three major forms of microtargeting:
Reinforcement;
Disruption;
Attraction.
Professor Oliver Escobar, Chair of Public Policy and Democratic Innovation at The University of Edinburgh, says the trend is part of the “marketisation of elections” - and outlines three major forms of microtargeting:
Reinforcement;
Disruption;
Attraction.
Category
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hello, I'm David Lee and welcome to the latest episode in the Data Capital podcast series,
00:09brought to you by the Scotsman and the Data Driven Innovation Initiative, which is part
00:14of Edinburgh University and part of the Edinburgh and South East Scotland city region deal.
00:20This episode of Data Capital is called Data, Deepfakes and Democracy, and it previews a
00:26conference of that name, which will be held on September 26th this year.
00:32Data and artificial intelligence are playing an increasingly prominent role in elections
00:38and 2024 is packed with democratic polls in countries including the UK, United States
00:44and India, as well as the European Union.
00:48So what impact might data and AI have, both positive and negative?
00:54Even after the UK election was called, a news story suggested young voters were being
00:58targeted with fake AI generated videos and disinformation, and there are clear challenges
01:04as the lines blur between what is real and what is fake in our online world.
01:10So how can democratic societies counter those threats and build better future democracies
01:16by regulating and controlling AI and data effectively?
01:21How can we create spaces where people can talk to each other and debate openly and aren't
01:26forced into online echo chambers by bots?
01:30One speaker at this year's conference is Oliver Escobar, who is Professor of Public Policy
01:35and Democratic Innovation at the University of Edinburgh, and I'm talking to him today
01:41about some of these issues.
01:43Welcome, Oliver.
01:44Thanks, David.
01:45Hi.
01:46Hello, everyone.
01:47And first of all, should we be concerned, Oliver?
01:50Should we be concerned about these blurring of lines between real and fake, between truth
01:55and lie, especially when it comes to election time and making our decision as to where we
02:01put that cross?
02:02Should we worry that we might be making decisions based on something that's just simply not
02:06true?
02:07Yeah, absolutely.
02:10We should be very worried, especially because in many ways this year is the largest real
02:17life experiment we've had in terms of understanding the impact of a range of technologies, data-driven
02:24technologies, but a wider range as well of technologies.
02:27So we are going to learn a lot.
02:32Hopefully some of the existing mechanisms, limited as they are, will prevent some of
02:38the worst effects, but that's not a given, and things might go wrong in a number of ways.
02:44And if this was happening at a time when democracies were in a stable position and where we didn't
02:52confront the rise of authoritarianism, authoritarian populism, as well as a number of other undecidable
03:01dynamics that are kind of constraining and undermining democratic practice, then perhaps
03:08we will have the luxury of, okay, let's just learn, see how it goes.
03:13But the reality is that we find ourselves in a moment of democratic recession across
03:18the world.
03:19So my concern is how some of these developments might undermine democratic stability, the
03:28advance of democracy, and how they might feed into democratic backsliding and democratic
03:34recession.
03:35Okay, great stuff.
03:37That's a really good way of setting the tone that we're at.
03:39We're at a kind of pretty challenging point here in terms of the way that data and AI
03:45might affect elections.
03:46And as you say, the number of election this year is a real, it's almost like a kind of
03:51a big experiment, a big Petri dish of what might happen.
03:55So let's talk about one particular thing.
03:58Let's talk about something that we're all subject to, even though we might not always
04:01recognize it, this idea of micro-targeting, this idea of sending messages to individuals
04:09to try and affect the way that they might behave in an election.
04:14Can you just tell us a bit, first of all, what do we mean by micro-targeting and when
04:18did it really first come into the political arena?
04:22Yeah, so micro-targeting is a fascinating topic.
04:26It can be a little bit terrifying because it paints a picture of kind of dynamics within
04:35electoral political campaigning that sometimes is not really transparent out there and it's
04:42not even considered necessarily a problem.
04:46You know, I don't think you're going to hear a lot of media problematizing the issue of
04:51micro-targeting, but this is happening at industrial scale.
04:56So essentially micro-targeting is, in the context of a political campaign, is the use
05:04of data analytics and very sophisticated forms of personalized advertising to target
05:12people with very bespoke messages that speak to the priorities, beliefs, perceptions, behaviors
05:23of particular groups in society.
05:26So essentially it's like a hyper-sophisticated form of sending marketing messages, political
05:34marketing messages that are tailored to you and to you as you are known through the data
05:41profiles that political campaigns now manage.
05:47It's important to say, though, that it's not new in the sense that this was happening even
05:54before the data-driven innovation revolution that we are undergoing.
05:59It was happening before AI reached the latest stages where it's a little bit more advanced.
06:08And it's part of a bigger trend which has to do with the marketization of politics.
06:14See in political life and democratic life, not in terms of the public forum, the space
06:20where we all meet to make sense of the challenges of our time and how we might tackle them,
06:26but instead of that, turning democratic politics into a market where it's all about the relationship
06:34between elites and different sections of the population.
06:38And that renders itself much more into a terrain of political marketing rather than public
06:44dialogue and deliberation.
06:46OK, when did we first see micro-targeting, Oliver?
06:49We think about it as very much a kind of in terms of data and digital and AI now.
06:56But was there a kind of, you know, a pre-digital approach to micro-targeting in global elections?
07:03Yeah, so micro-targeting has a very interesting history because in many ways, this was always
07:10the dream of political marketeers, of people working in the space of political campaigning
07:15and marketing, you know, to have tools that allow you to reach individuals in a way that
07:23feels personalized, in a way that speaks to your wants and fears and needs and motivations
07:29and aspirations.
07:31So it's been a dream of the field of political marketing, you know, since inception, which
07:36is over 100 years ago when these things started.
07:39But more recently, usually researchers position this somewhere in between the Obama campaign,
07:49but also the prior campaign to that, the re-election of George W. Bush.
07:55But there is a fundamental difference because in the Obama campaign, we are already in the
07:58age of social media, whereas...
08:00So in 2004, George W. Bush was facing re-election and, you know, they put together a strategy
08:07of micro-targeting that was drawing on existing consumer databases.
08:13It was quite targeted to try and mobilize a certain profile of pro-Republican or potentially
08:20pro-Republican voter.
08:22And it was a little bit clunk...
08:24Well, much clunkier than things are now, but that was the early stages.
08:27But then the Obama campaign, starting from 2006 in the run-up to the 2008 election, took
08:33things to the next level.
08:34They had a large team of data scientists, they had new databases that were emerging.
08:40It was the early days of social media, remember things like X, Twitter, things like this started
08:46around 2006 or so, or at least started to gain pace.
08:52So that kind of accelerated things.
08:54And then it took a completely much larger role in the 2012 campaign where, you know,
09:02again, the data analytics, the capacity for sort of big data analysis, for all kinds of
09:11pattern analysis, et cetera, just became so much more powerful.
09:15And the existing digital data produced in that early age of the first kind of round
09:23of social media platforms became so much larger that these things just took on another dimension.
09:30And sometimes there's a misperception that a lot of this stuff started to be more used
09:35later on, say with the Trump campaign.
09:37But that's not true.
09:38This is not...
09:39You cannot tell a partisan story with this.
09:41All the political parties are using it.
09:44So the question is more profound.
09:46The question is, why does our political life need to go into this direction, which to me
09:52connects to that point about treating electoral politics, democratic politics, more like a
09:57market and less like a forum.
10:00OK.
10:01And let's talk a bit about issues that we might see in terms of...
10:07We're talking now, hopefully people will listen to this podcast for a while, but we're talking
10:10now during the UK election campaign.
10:13What are likely to be some of those touchstones, those touch points for micro-targeting?
10:18What sort of issues do you think the parties are going to go for when it comes to micro-targeting?
10:23Yeah.
10:24So let's take the UK election campaign.
10:29We are in the early stages just now as we record this podcast, but we can already begin
10:36to see some of the areas that are going to be a key target for this.
10:41And that piece from the BBC that you mentioned on TikTok targeting of young people already
10:52gives us some clues.
10:53I mean, it's the issues that you also see in mainstream media.
10:58It's immigration, issues of transgender people's rights, issues that tend to either trigger
11:09all kinds of passions, more heat than light, issues that kind of can drive a wedge between
11:20different groups in the population, issues that can give the false appearance that political
11:27parties are more distinct than what they actually are, right?
11:33And so in many ways, these are issues that are cynically used for their symbolic power.
11:39Because as soon as you spend a little bit of time talking to people in the different
11:44political parties about some of these things, you realize that they actually tend to have
11:47a more nuanced view.
11:48But that's not what they use in the strategic messaging that goes into micro-targeting,
11:56because it kind of seems that there anything goes.
12:01And are we talking, Oliver, about are there specific platforms that are doing more of
12:05this, or are we talking about multiple platforms that are sending us broadly the same messages
12:11if they have some kind of understanding of those touch points, those issues that might
12:17make us respond in a certain way?
12:19Yeah, so the media, the multimedia ecosystem is fascinating because, as we know, actually
12:29there is not a lot of diversity in the ownership of this media, right?
12:34You have the great corporate conglomerates, and you might think, well, I have three or
12:41four different platforms that I tap into, but probably half of them are owned just by
12:47one company.
12:48And so we might have the sense that we are in a plural kind of ecosystem, yet that's
12:58a false impression, because the political economy of the media, the way things are arranged,
13:04owned, et cetera, has an impact in all of this.
13:08But the key here is that, at least when it comes to micro-targeting, and also once you
13:14start to mix micro-targeting with deep fakes, with strategies of disinformation, then you
13:23begin to realize that, well, the messages are tailored to the individual.
13:27And then it really, in that sense, doesn't matter what platform you use, as long as that
13:32gets reinforced.
13:33So that when you get your social media feed through TikTok, with a particular message
13:40that is targeted to the profile of individual that they think you are, that political marketeers
13:45think you are, then you might leave that and think you're going into a new environment
13:49to check some YouTube videos.
13:50But again, you're kind of getting, again, the same type of messaging, or at least the
13:55ballpark themes that keep coming at you.
13:58And then you might think, well, let me just go somewhere else, let me see something really
14:01different.
14:02And you might go to one of the old social media, say Facebook, and surprise, surprise,
14:07you're kind of getting messages that are, and you know, this kind of, this sometimes
14:12can produce the effect of giving the false impression that you are in a pluralistic media
14:18environment, but you are just in your own kind of bubble that is formed by bubbles that
14:23live in multiple sites.
14:25So a multi-sided space of personal influence in which your relationship with political
14:33life is kind of mediated by all kinds of interests and artefacts that are not necessarily your
14:41best friends as a citizen.
14:44The multi-sided echo chamber, that sounds like a good title for a book, actually.
14:49I think I'll bear that one in mind.
14:51So let's talk a little bit about these different kinds of micro-targeting, Olivier.
14:55Can you just tell us, there are kind of three, we had a chat about this before, three broad
14:59areas that we're talking about.
15:01If you can just summarise what those areas are, and then we'll talk about each of them
15:04in a bit more detail.
15:05Yeah.
15:06So, I mean, this is a way of categorising some of the effects that are sought through
15:13these kinds of strategies.
15:14Of course, we need to say that, you know, it's not, some of these areas, you know, and
15:21some of these developments are as old as politics, it's just that there is an element
15:27of amplification, etc.
15:29But it's important to note that, you know, the impact of these strategies is not simplistic,
15:37it's not as if they always achieve these things I'm going to be mentioning, it's not as if
15:41it's a linear kind of type of impact.
15:45So there is nuance to it, and people still have agency, we're still, you know, to some
15:49extent, we do have a space to make sense of things, remain critical citizens, try and
15:54see what's, you know, what's real, what's not, what has the ring of truth and what doesn't.
16:01So these are the caveats that you will get from an academic like me, right?
16:04But if I was to categorise, I would say that the type of effects or dynamics that are sought
16:12can be clustered around three things.
16:15One of them is reinforcement.
16:18These things are used to reinforce what people think.
16:21So that, you know, if you are already someone who has a strong view on a political party
16:26or how you're going to vote or a particular issue, you know, some of these messaging can
16:31reinforce that and just make you even more confident that you should keep going in that
16:35direction.
16:36In other cases, it has more to do with disrupting.
16:40So some of these messages are designed so that, you know, you begin to have doubts about
16:45what you might be thinking of doing.
16:47Say for example, maybe you are a conservative voter in the UK election, but this election
16:55you're considering, do I, maybe, maybe the Leave Dems are an option for me.
17:00Maybe Labour, because Labour is now kind of making an offer to former conservative voters
17:07or to current conservative voters.
17:10And if you're in that situation and you're a conservative political strategist, what
17:15you might want to do is to place some doubts in the mind of those citizens and make them
17:21think twice.
17:23So the result might not be that they end up voting for the conservatives.
17:28Maybe they don't.
17:29The result might be that they also don't vote for the others.
17:32So, you know, if I can't get your vote, no one else gets it.
17:36And I do that through messages that are disruptive of that perspective that you are developing.
17:43So messages that are designed to plant some level of doubt in changing your vote.
17:50And then the third category is to do with attracting new voters, perhaps voters who
17:57have been on the fringes of politics, which keep growing these days, as we know, also
18:04in, you know, now as we are in the middle of the European elections as well, there is
18:10an expected rise of the far right and the populist far right and authoritarian kind
18:18of propositions and political forces, and which kind of speaks to the fact that some
18:25of these groups are no longer just on the fringes, they are permeating the mainstream
18:31of politics, so to speak.
18:33So if you're attracting new voters, you're trying to bring in people who haven't voted
18:38before or who are on the fringes but can be attracted to vote potentially for one of the
18:44mainstream parties as long as they cater a little bit to fringe messages.
18:50So attracting new voters, it can also be voters who simply, you know, haven't voted due to
18:55some level of apathy or disinterest.
18:58And so these are, yeah, reinforcement, disruption, attraction.
19:03Thanks very much, Oliver.
19:04That's really interesting and really clear.
19:06When we just go back to, we'll go back to the one by one and talk in a bit more detail.
19:10So reinforcement, first of all, I mean, is that broadly speaking, is that retrenching
19:16your core vote and just making sure that those voters who have broadly been with you, whether
19:22they've been conservative, Labour, Republican, Democrat, they broadly stick with you by
19:27reinforcing those very core messages to them?
19:32Yeah, absolutely.
19:32And it's a lot to do with reminding you why is it that you placed yourself in that type
19:43of ideological position before and why you use your vote in that particular way, right?
19:50And you see this, again, an example just now, really interesting example is coming
19:56through the strategy of the conservatives in the UK in these early stages of the election,
20:01when they were offering the triple lock plus regarding pensions in the UK, which is an
20:09offer to their core voters.
20:10They're reinforcing and reminding them, look, you're with us because we have these offers
20:16to you and don't forget that we are the party who does that for you.
20:19So that kind of reinforcement.
20:21Of course, these messages are in the mainstream, as well as they are in micro-targeting strategies
20:26that we don't see, that only individuals get to see.
20:30And when you talk about disruption, Oliver, I was quite interested in what you said, that
20:36you started touching on this point that it's not just about disrupting and bringing somebody
20:41over.
20:42It could be actually dissuading somebody from taking part in the democratic process full
20:47stop.
20:48It could be about just trying to get them not to turn out.
20:52And I think there was this example not that long ago of where there was an audio deep
20:58fake from Joe Biden that was basically saying, don't bother voting in the primaries, hold
21:02your vote back until until November.
21:04So how do you how do you feel about that element of dissuasion, disincentive, turning people
21:12away potentially from voting?
21:13How do you how do you feel about that as a strategy?
21:15Does that make you uncomfortable as someone who studies, you know, democracies?
21:22Absolutely.
21:22I mean, I am, you know, I think that the solution to the problems of democracy is more democracy,
21:30not less democracy.
21:31So strategies of demobilization, strategies of dissuasion, strategies that try to take
21:38out of the political process sections of the population, which, by the way, tend to see
21:42tend to be the sections of the population who are usually excluded and marginalized
21:47and not addressed in policy priorities and policy areas, which tend to be very reflective
21:53of certain sections of the population and not others, because those are the ones who
21:57are mobilized and others are demobilized.
22:00So we should be really concerned about this, especially when, you know, then people like
22:06me, I'm a radical democrat and I work a lot on democratic reform, democratic renewal
22:12and democratic innovation.
22:14And all of those are fields on their own and do and try to advance democracy in their own
22:18ways.
22:20But they all have in common the many conversations and proposals that we make to governments,
22:27institutions, civil society organizations around the world around how to improve democracy.
22:32And often, you know, in conversations with politicians, very often what we get back is
22:41a response that says, look, representative democracy, electoral democracy with its imperfections
22:49still has a number of virtues, which I agree with.
22:51I'm not, you know, I think they need to be part of the picture.
22:55They're just not enough.
22:56Given the challenges we're facing, we need a richer form of democracy that involves citizens
23:02in more meaningful ways in tackling the problems of our time.
23:05And, you know, we're not going to have the capacity to govern technology and to govern
23:11the climate emergency and to govern the migration crisis across the world, etc., etc., unless
23:17we begin to develop that kind of richer democracy where everyone pulls in together.
23:21But what I often get from politicians is this view of our existing systems as, look, they
23:27might be imperfect, but they kind of work and everyone gets a vote and everyone gets
23:32an equal chance to influence.
23:35And all of this is based on political theory, on a theoretical view that electoral democracy
23:41promotes equality.
23:42Well, there are many questions about that because, as we know, electoral systems, like
23:47the one we have in the UK with a first-past-the-post system, excludes large sections of the population
23:53from shaping the policy agenda or even voting for the parties they actually want to vote
23:57for rather than having to vote strategically.
24:01And then on top of that, add to that the many barriers that get put in place for people
24:06to vote.
24:07I mean, in the States, this reaches absolutely decadent proportions.
24:12When you look at gerrymandering, the playing with electoral boundaries, so that, you know,
24:18a politician's benefit from the demographics of a particular constituency in terms of getting
24:26votes, or the demobilization strategies of people from African-American communities,
24:33all of this is well documented.
24:35So it's, you know, even for radical democrats like me, if we were not to do more democratic
24:42innovation and have a more participatory and deliberative democracy alongside our
24:47electoral representative democracy, even if we were just to have an electoral representative
24:52democracy, if it worked as it's meant to work, which certainly doesn't include demobilizing
25:00sections of the population on purpose through political marketing, then I would be quite
25:05happy.
25:05I would think we're making progress.
25:06But we have a very imperfect system in which a lot of the dynamics that keep that system
25:13going undermine that very system of democracy.
25:16And this space of political marketing does a lot of damage.
25:21And it's one of those imperfections, Oliver, again, we see very, very simplistic messages
25:28put out through these different methods of micro-targeting just to get somebody angry
25:34enough to vote one way, just to get somebody disillusioned enough not to vote.
25:40And do you think a lot of political parties are putting out messages there on those kind
25:46of touchstone issues, immigration, trans rights, etc., that they don't necessarily believe
25:51in, particularly in that culture wars arena, just to get people angry enough to push them
25:56over the line, irrespective of what that policy might look like further down the line?
26:01Yes, sadly, that happens.
26:04It happens more often than it should.
26:06I think there are cynical uses of these tools, which is also why then when reality hits,
26:18political parties suffer.
26:19I mean, take the issue of immigration.
26:21For 10 years in successive conservative governments in the UK to try and sort of address their
26:30several promises over the years on migration.
26:33But then reality hits, and migration is not a simplistic issue.
26:37It has economic consequences, especially in a country like the UK with the demographics
26:43that we have.
26:44In Scotland, even more so, where many would argue, many researchers and credible academics
26:54that look into this in depth, they would argue migration is a must if we want to keep a minimum
26:59level of public services in Scotland.
27:01Now, none of this makes it into public discourse by the mainstream political parties.
27:06You only get a very simplistic message.
27:09But that only buys you time for a little bit, because, look, what's happening?
27:13I mean, Brexit is, in theory, done.
27:15I'm using quotation marks, which is not great in a podcast.
27:20And yet, here we have record numbers of net migration, and politicians who make political
27:28capital out of peddling simplistic discourses on migration policy are just confronted by
27:35the reality.
27:36And those, you know, and then chickens come home to roost.
27:41And, you know, and so the more we keep treating people as targets of simplistic messages,
27:52the more we are undermining the political system.
27:54The thing is, you look at simplistic messaging, and you will get the impression that we have
28:00a country of people who cannot hold two thoughts in their head at the same time, people who
28:06cannot grasp that things are complex and that you need to look in a well-rounded way at
28:12things, that actually no one, no one individual has the solutions.
28:17It's always the work of networks, communities, groups, institutions, and it takes time.
28:23All these things, you know, you will be forgiven for thinking that we have a country just full
28:29of people who just don't get it, which couldn't be further from the truth, because if that
28:35was the case, we couldn't function as a society, right?
28:38What we have is the highest educated citizenry in the history of the UK.
28:44What we have, and this is borne by all kinds of statistics, is the most sort of critical
28:50citizenry that has ever been, less differential to blind authority, etc., etc., all kinds
28:56of things that make for good critical citizenship.
28:59But when you don't cater to that, when what you do is just to present the image that citizens
29:05are this kind of simpletons that needs to be given just crisp, simplistic messages and
29:11fake solutions to problems that are far more complex, then what you're doing is undermining
29:16the capacity of your democracy to see itself as a system with the ability to tackle these
29:22challenges.
29:23Okay, so how can we start to bridge that deficit, Oliver?
29:26How can we, what are your sort of ideas for moving away from these very polarised, simplistic
29:33approaches to a better kind of democratic discourse?
29:39Yeah, it actually starts with something that sounds simple, but it's a little bit more
29:45complicated.
29:47You know, it starts with recovering and rebuilding the vibrancy of our public sphere.
29:57Now, the public sphere is an academic concept, but I think most people get it once you get
30:03into it, right?
30:04It's the kind of space that we have as a society to make sense of things, right?
30:11It's not the state or the public sector, it's not the private realm or the private
30:17sector.
30:18It's the space in between, the space of civil society, the space of everyday relationships
30:23in sports clubs and churches and neighbourhoods and all kinds of associations.
30:30It's the space where public opinion develops.
30:34It's the space where we engage with each other in public conversations of all kinds, and
30:39often political.
30:40Although people tend to say that they don't like talking politics, but actually when you're
30:43talking about housing in your area, when you're talking about your kids' schools, when you're
30:49talking about how you're struggling to get a GP appointment or a specialist mental health
30:56support kind of treatment, all of those things are political, right?
31:02So we talk politics all the time.
31:05Don't believe what people often say, oh, people don't want to talk politics.
31:08Well, people don't want to talk partisan politics, but that's just a tiny proportion.
31:13So in that space of the public sphere, where we gather together, where we make sense of
31:17things, where we try to work out how we do things in communities, in neighbourhoods,
31:22in local authorities, in regions and building up to country level, that is the space that
31:29we need to nurture and protect.
31:31And that is the space that gets undermined by treating democratic life, political life
31:36as a market.
31:37Because if it's a market in which it's all about certain elites, political elites, micro
31:43targeting you as an individual, holding you in your bubble and echo chamber, and then
31:48having that unidirectional relationship just between you and the political messenger, then
31:54you're not part of the public sphere.
31:56That's a dynamic of leadership and followership rather than a dynamic of democratic engagement
32:02and citizenship.
32:03Now, in the public sphere, that's the place where we can combat disinformation because,
32:09you know, you might be micro targeted with a piece of disinformation that will have a
32:15stronger effect if you're isolated from your community, from your family, from a group
32:20of friends than if you are connected, that if you are someone who has opportunities in
32:27the public sphere to say, oh, I heard this.
32:30Did you hear that?
32:31And then all of a sudden, we have this interesting effect, which in deliberative democracy studies,
32:38we call the laundering effect, right?
32:40Which is when in society, once you share your views, there's an opportunity for others to
32:45say, oh, but have you considered this?
32:47Actually, I don't know if that's a credible source.
32:49Let's look into that.
32:50And by the way, what's the motive behind this kind of messaging?
32:53Because actually, it doesn't seem true.
32:56And it's those conversations that are the most powerful way of keeping in check a lot
33:01of these attacks that target the individual.
33:03So the response is a community response.
33:06As individuals, it's really hard to resist this stuff, especially when it confirms our
33:11own views, when it feeds our motivated reasoning, which is the kind of reasoning we do when
33:17we're trying to prove a point we believe in, regardless of whether we are getting evidence
33:21that undermines that point.
33:22So this motivated reasoning is behind a lot of the troubles in a lot of this kind of political
33:29marketing strategies.
33:31So part of the response is a vibrant public sphere, where public conversation, public
33:36dialogue, public deliberation is in a healthy state.
33:39And of course, that requires public spaces.
33:42And as we know, in many countries, including the UK, those public spaces have been undermined.
33:48Institutions are losing credibility, traditional spaces of association and conversation are
33:54being atomized because of profound economic inequalities and the state of economies around
34:01the world.
34:02A lot of this also shapes the very dire circumstances and challenges that people face.
34:07And all of that gets in the way of communities that can have that level of engagement, because
34:13then we're just in survival mode in very challenging times, which accentuates that
34:18individualizing effect.
34:20Yeah.
34:20So where does that leave us, Oliver?
34:22So, you know, as you say, there are places we can still have those conversations, whether
34:27that's around the family table, whether it's in a club with like-minded people or a pub
34:32or, you know, we can have these conversations.
34:35But do we need to create new online spaces as well to counter some of the negative effects
34:42that you've talked about of online platforms and the messages that they're sending through
34:46to us that are creating this kind of polarized, simplistic approach?
34:51What kind of newer online forums are we seeing developed to create those more open,
34:57deliberative conversations?
35:00Yeah, I think this is such an important point.
35:02And to be honest, something that I really, really wish and hope our mainstream media
35:08are going to start to pick up on because it will feed into public awareness and public
35:13imagination.
35:14Because at the moment, a lot of people have the impression that all you can do online
35:18is to join some of these traditional social media, some of these echo chambers, some of
35:22these polarizing spaces.
35:24But there's a whole world out there.
35:27And in academia and research, we call it the space of digital democratic innovation.
35:33And, you know, two or three years ago, I was designing a new course for the Edinburgh
35:40Futures Institute called Digital Democratic Innovations.
35:45And when you're designing a new course for students who want to be kind of getting an
35:50advanced level understanding, as well as practical knowledge to navigate these new possibilities,
35:56you're always faced with a dilemma.
35:57How much time do I spend talking about the gloom and doom, all the traditional spaces
36:03where all of these dynamics, undecidable dynamics are taking place?
36:07And how much I spend on the positive side saying, hey, but there's also this other brighter
36:11side, new platforms, new tools, new spaces, new social media as well.
36:17And I decided I was just going to focus on the brighter side because there's so much on the
36:21negative side.
36:22So we spend a lot of time just looking into this.
36:26And, you know, a lot of the social media that most people are familiar with, Facebook, Twitter,
36:34even TikTok, they are social media based on a very last century type of dynamic.
36:43They are not designed for meaningful dialogue and deliberation.
36:47They are much more designed for that kind of micro-targeting, that kind of unidirectional
36:52communication, that kind of top-down forms of engagement, which then provoke all kinds
36:58of undecidable things like pylons and, you know, kind of herd mentality and all that
37:04kind of stuff.
37:06But they will eventually, you know, they will be a thing of the past.
37:12We're going to be surprised in 10, 15 years time when we look back and we see those early
37:16stages, those early social media.
37:18There are new social media being developed that are much more designed for people to
37:23join productive spaces where there is robust disagreement, but it's in a digital infrastructure
37:28that allows for meaningful dialogue and exploration and for meaningful deliberation, weighting
37:34options, considering alternatives, and getting a range of perspectives and then reaching
37:39well-informed conclusions.
37:41So that's happening and they are out there.
37:43Some of them are now beginning to be better known, like Kialo, but there are many others.
37:48And then, this is not all, this is the social media bit.
37:50But then, even more excitingly, there's a whole space of new platforms that are designed
37:56for people to come together and not just have a conversation, but actually get involved
38:01in governance, in policymaking, in problem solving, in co-production of services and
38:06policies.
38:08And this is a fascinating area of growth, with hundreds of platforms that are now being
38:12tested in all kinds of places.
38:15And essentially, these are platforms that allow large groups of people, be it a community
38:19or an entire country and potentially a global-level community online, to come together and wrestle
38:26with an issue, engage in meaningful conversations, engage in meaningful deliberation, and then
38:32reach some form of consensus, if possible, or at least an informed consensus that presents
38:39very clearly what might be decidable ways forward that people can live with.
38:43OK.
38:43And can you give us a couple of examples of that, Oliver, that are actually out there
38:47at the moment?
38:49Yes.
38:50An example that has gained a lot of prominence because of some important learning that emerged
39:01during the pandemic is the case of Taiwan.
39:05In Taiwan, in 2014, they had this key moment in the country's history called the Sunflower
39:14Revolution.
39:16It was a moment of change, and then successive governments after that did something very
39:23unusual, especially if we have listeners from the UK here, and probably from many other
39:28parts as well.
39:30How many governments are prepared to open their doors to hacktivists to come in and
39:35give a hand, right?
39:37Now, hacktivists are hackers who happen to be activists.
39:42And in this case, the kind of white hat hacktivists.
39:46These are people who are trying to use tech for good.
39:51And so Taiwan has been for some years building digital infrastructure so that they can have
40:00new forms of engagement with the population, new forms of crowdsourcing legislation involving
40:06large parts of the population in feeding into legislative processes, into policymaking,
40:13into the management of crisis, for example, during the pandemic, etc., etc.
40:20And the reason Taiwan has become quite a prominent example is because their digital
40:26infrastructure and some of these new platforms and tools that they used to mobilize the
40:32population to work collectively and activate forms of collective intelligence and collective
40:37problem solving had a really important, it was a very important factor in how Taiwan
40:47dealt with the pandemic.
40:49And Taiwan has been one of the countries where the mortality levels has been lowest even
40:56up to today, but very clearly in the early stages.
40:59And it had a lot to do with having a trusted relationship between institutions and their
41:06publics mediated through good digital infrastructure with the spaces that went beyond traditional
41:13dynamics and created a more dialogue based, deliberative based type of space to the point
41:19that they are also becoming one of the key examples used in how to tackle this information.
41:24OK, and what about maybe one more example of how large groups of opinion are gathered
41:34together to sort of start those conversations off and allow people access to, as you said
41:41before, that plurality of opinion?
41:43I think there's something called POLIS that does that.
41:46Tell us a little bit about that.
41:47Yeah, POLIS is a really interesting platform because it came out, it was developed by some
41:54social entrepreneurs who were involved in the Occupy movement, and they were obsessed
41:58by the challenge of, OK, if we are proposing a more participatory democracy, how do you
42:03create a platform that can potentially involve millions, if not hundreds of millions of people
42:09in trying to grapple with complex issues?
42:11Now, incidentally, POLIS is one of a number of tools that Taiwan has been using to create
42:18so it's connected to that example as well.
42:21And POLIS is an example of how algorithms, artificial intelligence can be used or can
42:29potentially be used for good.
42:32So the way it works is that, you know, of course, as a citizen, it's really hard to
42:38engage with, say, one million people, let alone, you know, one billion people, right?
42:44So it's really difficult to engage in a conversation with such a large group.
42:49But what we do know from research is that on any given issue, there are usually around
42:56six to ten kind of perspectives, clusters, right, covering the spectrum.
43:02It might be ideological spectrum, but it might be, you know, other kinds of things that go
43:06into it.
43:06But usually, it's not like there's an infinite level of arguments on any given issue.
43:11There is a spectrum of them.
43:12So what this, what POLIS does is through this algorithm work, it clusters emerging public
43:21opinion.
43:22So you don't engage with a million people, you engage with the six, eight, ten themes
43:28or arguments or perspectives that are emerging.
43:31And that seems more manageable.
43:32And then it allows you not to just like and dislike or, you know, it doesn't have those
43:37kind of dynamics.
43:38What it invites you to do is to propose arguments that help to refine or that try to add new
43:45evidence or that try to offer a counter argument.
43:47So it's a much more kind of constructive and it tries to help people to see where the common
43:53ground seems to be emerging.
43:55And, you know, in Taiwan, for example, they've used it, you know, on all kinds of issues
44:00by now.
44:01And one of the ones that the BBC covered some time ago was on the regulation of Uber, which
44:06was disrupting the kind of taxi market in Taiwan.
44:12So, but this has been used by all kinds of issues.
44:15But this is just one example.
44:16I mean, there are many other platforms.
44:19One of my favorites, and this was the number one ranked civic technology platform globally
44:28two or three years ago, is a platform called DECIDIM, D E C I D I M.
44:37And it was born in Barcelona, is what we call a public community partnership.
44:43So it was with some investment from Barcelona's municipality and with a community of civil
44:50society, community networks and activists coming together to develop a platform where
44:56people can gather together, deliberate on an issue, vote on an issue, develop a proposal,
45:04monitor something, create all kinds of, you know, research tools as well, create a library,
45:10create a meeting space.
45:12Now, DECIDIM has now kind of spread all over, especially Europe, but beyond as well, because
45:19it has the capacity, it can be used by an organization, it can be used by an entire
45:23country or indeed by the European Union, which has used it.
45:26And by the way, it's an open access, free software platform, it's a non-profit, which
45:30I think is a really important aspect because, you know, the field of digital democratic
45:35innovation has all the typical ongoing battles between who owns this infrastructure and there
45:40are important debates around that.
45:42So in the case of DECIDIM, you know, for example, the Conference on the Future of Europe used
45:47DECIDIM as the key digital platform that sat behind a number of other processes, including
45:54citizen panels, where four large-scale citizens panels with 200 people each, reflective of
46:02the demographics of Europe, coming together to deliberate on the future of Europe.
46:06So that's just an example, but there have been others.
46:08There has been a global climate assembly, for example, with, again, by selecting people
46:14through lotteries so that everyone gets a chance to take part, people are brought together
46:17to try and address the climate crisis and come up with recommendations and solutions.
46:23There are many of these examples.
46:24I mean, there are hundreds of democratic innovations.
46:28My concern is that often people get a lot of the gloom and doom about the state of democracy,
46:33but we don't see what's happening in reaction to that democratic recession.
46:38In reaction to that, there is a very vibrant emerging set of fields that are trying to
46:44reclaim democracy, to deepen democracy, to expand democracy.
46:48And, you know, the powerful thing will be if at some point our existing democratic institutions
46:55and some of these new processes and civic institutions that are emerging come together,
47:00because that's where the powerful opportunity is to address the challenges of our time.
47:05And having said all that, Oliver, are you optimistic that things are moving in
47:11a positive direction?
47:12Are you worried that we'll see a big kickback from the big tech companies against these more,
47:19you know, participatory spaces, if you like, these more open dialogue spaces?
47:25And, you know, what does that say?
47:27How do you feel?
47:28Are you optimistic for the future?
47:31I am.
47:32I am 100% optimistic.
47:33I'll tell you why.
47:34There are two reasons.
47:36One is pragmatic and the other is a bit more idealistic.
47:41The pragmatic one is because pessimism is paralyzing.
47:45You know, if I was pessimistic about these things, I wouldn't get out of bed
47:51in the morning to try and chip in into some of this work.
47:56And I think that's the case for millions of people, right?
48:01I mean, so optimism sometimes is not a choice.
48:04Of course, we cannot be naive optimists.
48:07You still need to put in the work and we need to keep advancing and keep our critical thinking
48:12going and also demonstrate in practice these things.
48:16And that's what we're doing in the field of democratic innovation or what we're trying
48:20to do.
48:20And it's going to take time because, you know, it's taken centuries to build the institutions
48:23we have and we find ourselves having to build in just a few decades new systems that build
48:29on the old ones and upgrade them so that we can cope with what's coming down the line,
48:34with what's already here, the climate crisis and everything else.
48:37And so the next few decades are going to really test the capacity of these fields of democratic
48:45innovation and new forms of governance, etc.
48:47And we are going to be building the boat while we navigate these troubled seas, so to speak.
48:54So pragmatically, I cannot be anything other but optimistic.
48:59Also because I spend enough time with communities, with citizens of all kinds, even with some
49:05of our politicians and there are democratic innovators amongst them.
49:08There is still a minority, but some of them see the point of this and see that they need
49:12this.
49:12They really need help and this might help them.
49:15And they understand that they need to stop pretending that our existing institutions,
49:20as they are, without reform, without development, are going to manage to have the capacity to
49:27address some of these issues.
49:28So, you know, democracy can never stop.
49:32Democracy is always in development.
49:33That's been the history of democracy.
49:35Otherwise, it leads to a stagnation and in stagnation comes the undermining of democracy
49:40and the democratic backsliding.
49:41So pragmatically, I'm an optimist.
49:43But then on an idealistic level as well, you know, there's some real, you know, we could
49:50really genuinely accomplish quite amazing things.
49:54I know that at the moment, a lot of us, you know, especially if you really keep an eye
49:58on everything that's coming down the line, and it's already here, you know, the biotech
50:02revolution, of course, the, you know, the AI revolution, the climate crisis, the nature
50:08and ecological crisis, what we are expecting over the next few years in terms of population
50:15displacements and what that's going to mean across the world.
50:19And then that's even without mentioning growing economic inequalities and, you know, the
50:24real fault lines of the type of capitalism we've decided to invest in over the last 40,
50:3250 years in countries like the UK.
50:34When you put all of that together, you know, it's difficult to think that we can do anything
50:40but just try and survive the next few decades.
50:42But actually, we can do more than that.
50:44I think there's a real, real chance to really tap into the promise of democracy, which is
50:50to say, you know, a genuine democracy is a democracy that can mobilize the motivations,
50:55the capacities, the energy, the ideas, the problem-solving ability of its population
51:02to pull together through difficult conversations, through difficult trade-offs.
51:08None of this is easy, right?
51:10But once we realize that there's that untapped potential of having a democracy where citizens
51:17are working together through difficult issues to help political elites, economic elites,
51:24etc., to try and reform, change the system so that democracy belongs to everyone, so
51:29that politics is everyone's business, so that the economy is more reflective of people's
51:35priorities and needs.
51:37You know, I think there is a real opportunity over the next few years for real change.
51:42And the last point I'll make is, you know, this change in some ways is already happening.
51:48We just don't get to see it too much because there is not enough storytelling about this
51:54new, brighter space of democratic innovation, of social innovation, of communities pulling
51:59together to get things done.
52:01I think there is a real job to be done in the media ecosystem to help us expand our
52:08public imagination of what can be possible and not just, you know, all the troubles and
52:14problems that we are facing.
52:15So I think that that's going to be a really important job over the next few years, this
52:19amplification for public imagination, because, you know, things are not possible unless they
52:24are imaginable.
52:25So a great job over the next few years is to contribute to expand the public imagination
52:30by showing these examples, by showing how these things work, by showing that these things
52:34can work, and recovering our faith in fellow citizens.
52:39Not just that image of the citizen we get from a box pop of a very particular profile
52:44of citizen.
52:45No, the citizen that is, you know, your brother, your sister, your neighbor, the people in
52:49your family, in your communities.
52:51Most people who just really want to try and get on, find solutions to issues, and not
52:56be bamboozled by some of this micro-targeting and all this kind of stuff.
53:02So I think there's a real possibility for democratic renewal in the years to come.
53:06But it's going to be a hard fought and hard won.
53:09And we need to understand what's at stake.
53:13And, you know, for me, democracy is the foundation of everything else.
53:16I would say that as someone who's, you know, from Galicia in Spain, and where democracy
53:22is not to be taken for granted.
53:24And it's still a very recent development in many ways.
53:26I was born when democracy started in Spain.
53:29So for me, it's a real thing.
53:30It's not a theoretical construct.
53:32You know, my parents, you know, spent a lot of their lives and grew up in a dictatorship.
53:37They didn't get to go to school.
53:38They didn't get to, you know, any of the things I got to do, you know.
53:42So for me, democracy is a very material thing, not just a theoretical idea.
53:47It creates the conditions of possibility for a decidable future.
53:51I think we need to care more about it.
53:53We need to understand that democracy is more than electoral democracy.
53:56There are all these other aspects to it.
53:58And that politics is more than party politics, about how we together make sense of things
54:02and try to make progress.
54:05Great stuff.
54:05Thank you very much to the idealistic, pragmatic, and definitely optimistic Oliver Escobar for
54:13his fascinating insights today.
54:15And please do look out for some of those online spaces he talks about.
54:20Polis is pol.is, Decidim, as he described, and have a look at some of the Taiwanese stuff
54:27he mentioned as well.
54:28These places where these open, meaningful conversations and dialogues can take place.
54:33Please sign up for the Data, Deepfakes and Democracy conference on September the 26th
54:38in Edinburgh.
54:40The address there is nationalworldevents.com slash SDC hyphen 2024 slash.
54:49Do a search on National World Data Conference, you'll find it.
54:53And to listen to more episodes in the series, Data Capital, just search for Data Capital
54:59on all your favorite podcast platforms.
55:02Data Capital is presented by me, David Lee, and produced by Andrew Mulligan.
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