The other day, a friend took to social media to announce the birth of her (son). She used her Facebook page to let the world know of this event, which happened three weeks earlier. How strange that anyone deemed this particular use of social media newsworthy. Tweeting all through a birthing, perhaps, but not a belated Facebook post.
Modern information technology is transforming society so fast that what was cutting-edge yesterday seems quaint today. Increasingly sophisticated communication methods are being used in all spheres, including politics.
Most Philippine candidates for the 2013 public office, and their legions of friends and foes, are pouring resources into what George W. Bush once called the Internets. For instance, Senatoriables who were not favored with ‘cash gifts’ has challenged leaders of the Upper Chamber for a public audit using media directors to oversee their social media accounts, including online question-and-answer sessions.
They also are literally buying into these brave new outlets. Since late last year, political candidates and their supporters have spent nearly millions of pesos on online advertising, according to an independent private finance database. It is expected to surpass what they have spent on robo-calls, newspaper ads, billboards and brochures combined. The only that they would be spending more on are the paid ads on TV.
Dietram Scheufele, a life sciences communications professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies new information technologies, says campaigns are trying to reach “younger news consumers shifting to online-only diets.” But he adds that approach has been going on for some time — at least as long as people have been using Facebook to announce key life events.
A newer phenomenon, Scheufele says, is placing political ads in media like video games. For instance, the campaign of US President Barack Obama purchased an ad in an Xbox 360 Live car racing game, putting his campaign message on a street-side billboard that players race past. The ads were targeted to run in battleground states, including Wisconsin.
But even this, Scheufele notes, is an "old story," as these things go. He says what’s truly new, at least for the US election, is that campaigns “are hiring analysts and strategists to do one-on-one advertising.”
Early this year the Obama campaign ran an employment ad seeking geeks to use "statistical predictive modeling" to "determine which voters to target for turnout and persuasion efforts." The ad stated: "We will analyze millions of interactions a day, learning from terabytes of historical data, running thousands of experiments, to inform campaign strategy and critical decisions."
The campaign, Scheufele explains, is collecting and crunching available data on individuals. "All of us produce a significant stream of data," everything from which books we buy to which blogs we read to "how many seconds we spend looking at that article in the New York Times."
These data are then used to create profiles for the purpose of "microtargeting" — deciding which messages to pitch to whom, through emails, direct mail, phone calls and such. Katy Culver, a UW-Madison assistant professor of journalism, calls this approach "Big data, small targets." Some people are pursued as donors, others as potential converts, and still others as committed voters the campaign wants to keep engaged to ensure turnout.
If these things do not reach the Philippine shores before the 2016 Presidential Election, I would be very surprised.
Modern information technology is transforming society so fast that what was cutting-edge yesterday seems quaint today. Increasingly sophisticated communication methods are being used in all spheres, including politics.
Most Philippine candidates for the 2013 public office, and their legions of friends and foes, are pouring resources into what George W. Bush once called the Internets. For instance, Senatoriables who were not favored with ‘cash gifts’ has challenged leaders of the Upper Chamber for a public audit using media directors to oversee their social media accounts, including online question-and-answer sessions.
They also are literally buying into these brave new outlets. Since late last year, political candidates and their supporters have spent nearly millions of pesos on online advertising, according to an independent private finance database. It is expected to surpass what they have spent on robo-calls, newspaper ads, billboards and brochures combined. The only that they would be spending more on are the paid ads on TV.
Dietram Scheufele, a life sciences communications professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies new information technologies, says campaigns are trying to reach “younger news consumers shifting to online-only diets.” But he adds that approach has been going on for some time — at least as long as people have been using Facebook to announce key life events.
A newer phenomenon, Scheufele says, is placing political ads in media like video games. For instance, the campaign of US President Barack Obama purchased an ad in an Xbox 360 Live car racing game, putting his campaign message on a street-side billboard that players race past. The ads were targeted to run in battleground states, including Wisconsin.
But even this, Scheufele notes, is an "old story," as these things go. He says what’s truly new, at least for the US election, is that campaigns “are hiring analysts and strategists to do one-on-one advertising.”
Early this year the Obama campaign ran an employment ad seeking geeks to use "statistical predictive modeling" to "determine which voters to target for turnout and persuasion efforts." The ad stated: "We will analyze millions of interactions a day, learning from terabytes of historical data, running thousands of experiments, to inform campaign strategy and critical decisions."
The campaign, Scheufele explains, is collecting and crunching available data on individuals. "All of us produce a significant stream of data," everything from which books we buy to which blogs we read to "how many seconds we spend looking at that article in the New York Times."
These data are then used to create profiles for the purpose of "microtargeting" — deciding which messages to pitch to whom, through emails, direct mail, phone calls and such. Katy Culver, a UW-Madison assistant professor of journalism, calls this approach "Big data, small targets." Some people are pursued as donors, others as potential converts, and still others as committed voters the campaign wants to keep engaged to ensure turnout.
If these things do not reach the Philippine shores before the 2016 Presidential Election, I would be very surprised.
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