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Jamie Bartlett @JamieJBartlett
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PSYCHOGRAPHICS: a thread.There’s a lot of misunderstanding about this specific micro-targeting technique: what it is, if it works, and whether #cambridgeanalytica used it during the Trump campaign. This is my effort to explain it. 1/11
It is a technique of targeting users w/ messages informed by their personality type. It mostly revolves around working out individual personalities based on the well-known ‘OCEAN’ domains (‘Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness & Neuroticism).
000s of people took personality quizzes to workout their OCEAN scores, which were then cross referenced against Facebook likes. Here’s a short extract from my forthcoming book ‘The People Versus Tech’ explaining it. amazon.co.uk/People-Vs-Tech… (3/11)
This is how profiles for individuals were created. Messaging then reflects each person's OCEAN scores. So if you score highly on neuroticism, you get a message which emphasises dangers, and so on. It’s very emotional driven, one reason it feels quite manipulative. (4/11)
Whether any of this works is contentious. According to a 2017 study by Michal Kosinski, who helped pioneer this technique (and who Dr Kogan approached), such techniques can attract up to 40% more clicks & up to 50% more purchases. (Paper here: pnas.org/content/114/48…) 5/11
However, to my knowledge, there are no studies about whether this works for voting behaviour. I suspect lots of the claims made by i.e. Cambridge Analytica about effectiveness is typical salesperson bluster. But it will improve & will be used in future elections. 6/11.
Cambridge Analytica used psychographic techniques when they worked for the Ted Cruz campaign (they switched to Trump after Cruz was knocked out). Whether this helped the Cruz campaign or not is disputed, inc by people who worked with them. theguardian.com/us-news/2015/d… 7/11
However, Brad Parscale (who ran Trump’s digital ops) denies they used psychographics for Trump. I interviewed Nix about this last year for BBC2 – he also denied. However, Nix DID admit they took some ‘legacy data’
from Cruz over to Trump campaign. 8/11
Imho more significant than psychographics was that Cambridge A built ‘universes’ of ‘persuadable voters’ (e.g. American moms worried about child-care who hadn’t voted before.) Creatives then designed ads for these universes, based on the specific things they cared about. 9/11
Trump won Pennsylvania by 44 thousand votes out of 6 million cast, Wisconsin by 22 thousand & Michigan by 11 thousand. It was Cambridge Analytica (with the RNC) analysis that persuaded Brad Parscale to target these states extensively, against received wisdom. 10/11
In sum, the importance of psychographics as a technique is probably overhyped. However, it will certainly improve & be used in future. The focus on this dubious method obscures bigger challenges of micro-targeting, data use & our outdated analogue election law. END. 11/11.
(I should add that an increase of 50% sounds a lot. But it basically means going from 1 click per thousand to 1.5 clicks per thousand). 5.5/11
And for those who say ‘Obama used this stuff too’. This is true. But ad-tech and targeting has improved a lot (note Facebook partnerships with ie Axciom) since 2012. 10.5/11
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