The Ethics of Data Collection in Political Campaigns

Abstract

Political campaigning in its simplest form involves the use of information to persuade people on how to respond to the campaigner’s objectives, for example to vote for them, to at minimum get counted as voting, to engage with an associated issue, to attend a party or donate money. The sophistication of such a dynamic is well studied in marketing, persuading people to buy products. The consequences are relayed to the actions of a governing group in the state apparatus (Shiner, 2019), and it is important that they be knowledgeable and consent to it. Unpleasant feelings can result from the realisation of the reasoning behind the messaging and how it is adapted in people, and so they are likely to become passive to the engagement despite, in many cases, having strong feelings on the issue or an understanding of the issues at stake. The use of data in political campaigning opens up a can of worms when techniques of manipulation are employed which are not visible as being done on people's data. Political campaigns are a high-stakes context research involving political actors is challenging outside of specific processes (Consolvo et al., 2021). Data are often closely guarded and release was possible for certain groups of actors, who would nevertheless be identifiable by others. So while there is a large body of work on political organisation by academics, novel forms of analysis and ways to research actors in the campaign space are necessary. One avenue that is not included in the literature review are articles from legal publications or data journalists examining abuse, and investigations from the Information Commissioner’s Office preparing to take enforcement actions.

Keywords: Data Collection, Political Campaigns, Ethics, Manipulation, Consent, Voter Engagement, Legal Implications