NDM 7

Trump digital director says Facebook helped win the White House- The Guardian
























Brad Parscale, the digital director, said that the use of Facebook impacted the US election which led to Trump's win. Also, digital campaign advertising and micro-targeting of voters isn't new as sites such as Facebook allowed targeted election advertising as a business strategy, rather than representing their own political views.

• “Twitter is how [Trump] talked to the people, Facebook was going to be how he won,”“wanted people who supported Donald Trump” -Brad Parscale
• “Campaigns aren’t able to hand-pick Facebook team members to work on their projects,”   “had to be partisan and he questioned them to make sure”.  -the reported by CBS on the Facebook employees that served as “embeds” in his office
• “While Facebook teams offer insight into how our products work, campaigns make their own strategic decisions about how to use the Facebook platform.”
• “Twitter is how [Trump] talked to the people, Facebook was going to be how he won,” - Parscale
• Excerpts of the interview did not make clear if Parscale offered any data to back up his suggestion that Facebook ads targeting 15 people at a time were “how Trump won”.

There is a very (very) high dislike of the current president of the US and in a time where Facebook has been seen to be using Russian propaganda. The article suggests Facebook was at the forefront of the digital advertising of Trump's election campaign. Facebook provided Trump 2016 with employees placed into the the campaign's digital office and helped to were there to show 'educate' staff on how to utilise Facebook ads was wha Parscale stated because  “wanted people who supported Donald Trump” as the Face book employees were questioned on their political views.

Facebook's addressed the comment made by Parscale: “Twitter is how [Trump] talked to the people, Facebook was going to be how he won,” Facebook stated that they gave multiple companies support and not just for Trumps promotions .

The comment shows how actively Facebook pursued election advertising as a business strategy, even as its platform has come under attack for Russian-backed political propaganda, Facebook's election advertising allows campaigns to take lists of registered voters taken from public records and find those people on Facebook.

Experts in digital advertising have made cautions that when talking to media, campaign strategists often over-hype the sophistication of "micro-targeting" and similar digital efforts.

I think, the article highlights how much power audiences think social media has on themselves. We know of targeted ads but such things of Trumps digital office having access of public records, represents this power. Also, we can infer that there is power in advertisements on sites such as Facebook, even if Trump was able to show his biased opinions on Twitter, the ability for his campaign to be able to be taught how to target voters really shows how even the political views of these institutions will target audiences.