Social Media and Politics

The chapter considers how marketing techniques are applied to political and social change campaigns. It includes attempts at persuasion, and manipulation, through the digital advertising technologies that are available from both legitimate and shady sources (the mainstream and black markets in adtech). It includes case studies of political influence campaigns that have been run within borders, and those conducted by foreign powers. Of the latter, we include examples of ‘foreign influence’ campaigns and responses to them by governments, and defence and intelligence agencies, who regard (and respond to) these campaigns as a form of ‘grey-zone warfare’, as the ‘weaponisation of information’. Social media company actions to detect and remove ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’ are also included.