Microtargeting via Facebook and its impacts on federal state elections in Hamburg

• Autor(a) principal: Heeren, Silke
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/23619
• topic: Microtargeting Político; Redes sociais; Facebook; Eleições; Campanhas políticas; Hamburgo; Political microtargeting; Media sociais -- Social media; Elections; Political campaigning

The case of Cambridge Analytica in 2018 showed how the digital age and the resulting new possibilities for commercial marketing affect political campaigning. Despite concerns, today we observe that Facebook ad services are growing and political microtargeting has arrived in Europe. Since research in this context is still rare, this thesis aimed to analyze how advertising on a specific social media channel could impact a regional German election. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), political advertisements on Facebook during a two-month period before the federal state election in Hamburg in 2020 were studied. Content and discourse analysis were in line with Roemmele's and Gibson’s (2020) argument that the "subversive" form of microtargeting is very apparent and undermining the potential positive consequences of targeting political advertisements (p. 595). While inducing negative emotions such as fear and feelings of physical and social insecurity, targeted advertisements showed sexist and ageist attitudes, as well as they encouraged local identity and xenophobia. Essentially, the thesis argues that microtargeting encourages digital inequality, contributes to a voting culture which is emotionally and ideologically motivated, and may accelerate the polarization in society. Above all, the large share of discourse aiming to convince voters rather than to inform them, leads to the assumption, that microtargeting is a tool that serves to win potential voters at lowest possible information levels.