Campaign 2012 Hits Your Inbox

http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2012-07-24/campaign-2012-hits-your-inbox
Campaign 2012 Hits Your Inbox

TV attack ads will soon clutter evening newscasts and sporting events. But your email inbox may already be flooded.

Unbeknownst to most voters, the email inbox is the new Election 2012 battleground. Sophisticated data mining tools allow political campaigns to compile detailed information about individual voters and then send them precision donation pitches. Tech Tuesday explores how much the campaigns know about each of us and how they're using our preferences to woo us.

Guests

Lois Beckett

Reporter, Pro Publica

Clay Johnson

Author, "Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption" (O'Reilly)

Eitan Hersh

Assistant Professor of Political Science, Yale University

Related Links

ProPublica: "Explore Hundreds of Campaign Emails in the Message Machine"
Slate: "Project Narwhal: How a top-secret Obama campaign program could change the 2012 race"
NPR: "Can Science Plant Brain Seeds That Make You Vote?"

Compare Presidential Campaign Emails

Message Machine images courtesy ProPublica:

Comments

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gra wrote:

Like your other caller, I was receiving tons and tons of emails daily. It got so out of control that I unsubscribed to them all. I think the candidates are taking this "profiling" and info gathering via data mining too far.

Tue, 07/24/2012 - 12:30pm
citizencontact wrote:

Issues to consider:

  • Legal Prohibition of sending official congressional data to campaign
  • CANSPAM Act is used indiscriminately by commercial firms to limit the ability of political speech. This makes it harder for smaller local campaigns to reach their potential voters--making down ticket races harder.
  • HAVA Act has transformed the voter registration list field. Associating voter lists with other lists, like email, Facebook, etc is the a key part of this area.
  • Perhaps the HAVA Act improvements may help people who want to stop the disenfranchising of the elderly, African Americans, Latinos and others by some of the voter suppression efforts.

Daniel Bennett
Co-author, The Net Effect: How CyberAdvocacy is Changing the Political Landscape, 1999

Tue, 07/24/2012 - 12:52pm
The Kojo Nnamdi Show is produced by member-supported WAMU 88.5 in Washington DC.