“I Approve This Message”: 7 Online Ploys to Look Out for this Election Season

This is from the NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY MUSEUM & LIBRARY BLOG about the following post we authored:

“I Approve This Message,” an exhibition about the emotional impact of political advertising in a landscape altered by the internet, was set to open at the New-York Historical Society this September. The COVID-19 lockdown halted those plans, but we want to share a few of the exhibition’s themes, particularly as we barrel towards our new date with destiny on election day, Nov. 3.  Here we look at the fast developing world of digital campaigning and how to become a more aware consumer of online content and social media as we approach Election Day 2020.  photo: Alessio Jacona Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg

“Opposition Growing” … “Responses Needed” … “Critical Match” … “HUGE news” …  

It’s likely you’ve been inundated with emails supporting 2020 election candidates. Some, you may have contributed time or money to; others, you don’t even recognize. It’s a little like shopping on your favorite site on Wednesday and seeing a related ad on a different site on Thursday.

What you’re witnessing are political pros using the same marketing techniques and powerful technological tools their commercial counterparts have successfully used for decades. The difference is that commercial advertising has truth-in-advertising laws to govern their messages, while online political ads go completely unregulated.

Here’s why you should care…

On any given day, your privacy is being compromised by internet and mobile phone technologies. You are being tracked by advertisers, whether you’re watching TV at home, cheering at a rally, buying a campaign hat, visiting a favorite website, or reading a news story on your phone.

At least 70 different tracking technologies are used to capture your actions, like when you open your email.”
—Dec 2017 Wired article by Brian Merchant; Tactical Tech study

There can be literally thousands of data points specifically about you, many available from third party sources that have the ability to integrate with an advertiser’s or political campaign’s own database.

What is all of this data for? It’s in the service of microtargeting: identifying your interests and making assumptions about who you are and what you like—the friends you have; the books, groceries, or shoes you buy; where you’ve dined or gone to church, synagogue, or mosque; who you’ve voted for; what events you’ve attended. If you are biased or irrational, hopeful or angry, it is all noted. Because once an algorithm gets to know you, a message—whether true or not—can be tested and targeted specifically to your liking. Your confirmation bias can be reinforced.

Microtargeting transforms the public square of politics into the psychological mugging of every voter.”
—Roger McNamee, author, Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe

Facebook is a pro at this, and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign famously—and aggressively—used it to his advantage. The ads you received on Facebook from the Trump campaign were tested, tested, and tested to come up with just the right mix of creative elements and messaging in order to attract you to open, read, follow, contribute, sign-up, like, or share with others.

Most of the Trump campaign’s digital ad budget went to Facebook, testing more than 50,000 ad variations each day.[i]
—Brad Pascale, Trump Digital Director, on 60 minutes as reported by The Guardian

According to Facebook Vice President Andrew “Boz” Bosworth in a CNBC story: “[Trump] ran the single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen from any advertiser” (in other words, better than even the product marketers.)

For campaigns, it’s obvious how beneficial all of this can be: Increased engagement delivers email addresses, donations, event attendance, likes and dislikes, contact names, and other actions that help build word-of-mouth, excite the base, broaden support and, ultimately, win your vote. But for the general public, there is little to no protection from bad actors who move beyond aggressive messaging and into outright deception, fakes, and fraud. This can be nefarious and, even, destructive.

For the moment, microtargeting in the U.S. is here to stay and difficult to avoid if you have any kind of life online. The challenge is to be conscious of the ways we’re being targeted so that we can protect ourselves.

With just a modicum of knowledge and effort, it’s not that difficult to pick up on some of the ploys. Here are seven of the more common to be on the lookout for this election season:

 
A screenshot from a Joe Biden parody site that initially got more traffic than Biden’s official site

1) REDIRECTS AND COPYCAT WEBSITES
You can be unknowingly “redirected” from a trusted website you are looking for to a different site full of alternate information. For example, early in the campaign a parody site named “Joe Biden for President 2020″got more traffic than his official one.  Another parody site, trumphotels.org, went viral, getting more than a million visitors. Since COVID-19 appeared, illegitimate websites have sprung up that purport to sell difficult to get items like PPE, toilet paper and hand sanitizer. They nab your information, but don’t send you a purchased product.

What You Can Do: First, alert everyone in your family—especially your children—to the malicious ways a site can trick them. If you are contributing to a candidate or buying a product—basically whenever you use a credit card—be sure the HTTP on the url (website address) has an “s” at the end, which means the site is secure.

 

A screenshot from the fake website trumphotels.org

2) FAKE VIDEO 

These videos seem to be real but have been digitally manipulated in ways that can be obvious or subtle. The recent example that purported to show Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi slurring her words is an example of what some call a “cheap-fake.”  More sophisticated and frightening versions—described as deep fakes—are far more difficult to decipher and are waiting in the wings.

What You Can Do:  If a video seems too good (or too bad) to be true, you may want to check on its legitimacy. Look for tell-tale signs: the eye gaze is wrong or the eyes don’t blink; the hair or teeth look synthetic; the lip syncing is off; the skin tone is blotchy; there’s blurriness where neck meets the head; there are missing shadows. Also, judge the credibility of the speech: Would you expect this person to say that?  If you have doubts, most factchecking sites like politfact.com or snopes.com follow wide-spread ruses and report on them. 

3) DECEPTIVE CAMPAIGN ADS FROM FAKE SOURCES
Misleading campaign ads are designed to move far and fast and sow confusion online. During the 2016 presidential election, there was a concerted, coordinated campaign by the Russian-backed Internet Research Agency to create hostility, divide Americans, and discourage people from voting. Largely undetected at the time, some 3500+ divisive Facebook ads were microtargeted to U.S. voters on topics ranging from immigration, radical Islam, gun rights, and injustice against Black Americans to name a few. Facebook recently announced it will block advertising from state media, but you can’t just count on someone else. 

What You Can Do: Many of these ads had misspellings or grammatical errors, so if you were paying attention, those would have been a red flag. Many also identified themselves as coming from nonexistent organizations and websites that had similar names to real ones. If you start seeing new divisive ads or receiving something digitally that you never have seen before, be sure and check whether or not the sender is legitimate.

A screenshot of a social media ad from a fake organization that was meant to appeal to and anger gun right supporters in 2016.

4) FAKE SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS
These are social media accounts that mimic real people or entities and do things like amplify existing content online or start unfounded, but difficult to disprove, rumors. A subset of these are bots, automated computer code that appears human and only exists to exaggerate the prevalence of a certain point-of-view or choke off organic debate.  A number of social media companies have instituted new practices to protect users, but accounts are so numerous, it’s doubtful they can all be caught.

What You Can Do: Pretty much the same things you do for fake campaign content above—check out the sender. As for bots, it’s not easy to tell if you’re interacting with one, but there are nuances that raise red flags.

5) TROLLING
If you’ve spent time on Twitter or on any comment section, you’ve encountered a troll who seems intent on picking a fight no matter what the subject matter is. They’re all about stirring up trouble and eliciting knee-jerk reaction from unsuspecting readers.

What You Can Do:  If you ever read comments online, you can easily pick up on this phenomenon. And then you can proceed to do the only thing that disarms a troll: ignore and move on.

6SPEAR PHISHING 
This con involves malicious emails ostensibly sent from a trusted sender that gets targets to reveal confidential info. (If you’re a high profile hot-shot, it’s called whale phishing.) For example, maybe you contributed to a candidate you trust and you received an email, seemingly from the same source, asking for additional, confidential information or providing a link to a login page. If you comply with either request, it makes it easy for a scammer to harvest your credentials for their own purposes.

What You Can Do: Check, check, check the sender and the url of the webpage before you click.

7). HACKS AND LEAKS
Remember the Wikileaks release of hacked emails from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign? Suffice it to say, hacks and leaks can have a huge impact on elections, changing hearts and minds and impacting enthusiasm and outcomes.

What You Can Do: Everyone wants to be in on a secret, particularly when it’s headline news. But at the very least, the next time any campaign or entity is hacked, don’t just react.  Ask yourself: Who is benefitting? Is there another side? And then decide: Should I change my support based on this information?

The bottom line for surviving the election season: Be aware and be suspicious. Always check the url before you click, and look for content with obvious and subtle distortions. If something just doesn’t feel right, check if anyone has reported on a similar experience. If you don’t believe the reporters and fact-checkers? Verify by digging up the information on your own.

Don’t just accept what you receive, read, and hear on the internet. Don’t just react and click or share quickly. Recognizing that miscreants are dining on your data and serving it up to others on a platter for their use can help you avoid spreading their misinformation.

Read More: “I Approve This Message”: The Birth of TV Campaign Ads and 9 Presidential Election Classics

Read More: Did “I Approve This Message” Live Up to its Promise?

Written by Harriett Levin Balkind, Founder of nonpartisan HonestAds.org and creator and guest curator of the I APPROVE THIS MESSAGE: Decoding Political Ads exhibition hosted by the Toledo Museum of Art, 2016

For the 2020 election season, we’re writing posts for The New-York Historical Society Museum & Library blog …

Delighted to be writing several posts about political advertising and the altered media digital landscape for the New-York Historical Society Museum & Library. If you’re not familiar with this institution, it is one of Manhattan’s unique gems and manages to give its visitors a tantalizing mix of American History blended with a surprising look at New York City. The experience, along with their speaker programs, can only be described as magical.

As part of the museum’s “Behind the Scenes” blog,” the first post: I Approve This Message”: The Birth of TV Campaign Ads and 9 Presidential Election Classics may bring back a few memories. You’ll view remarkable ads dating from 1952, when they first began airing on TV, along with a little history behind each of them.  You’ll note how we remain concerned with the very same issues today.Thought of by many as the best presidential incumbent and nominee election ads ever made, these are among the most emotional, which is the critical ingredient that makes them the best.  Hope, anger, fear, pride. You’ll “feel” all those here.

The second post, Did “I Approve This Message” Live Up to its Promise? goes into the history of this Stand by Your Ad statement and whether it’s still relevant today.

A third to come is about the manipulation fostered by social media and what to watch out for.

Hope you enjoy the read(s), and stay tuned,

Harriett Levin Balkind, founder, HonestAds

EXPERIENCE “I APPROVE THIS MESSAGE”

The 2-3/4 minute video above takes you on a walk-through of the nonpartisan experiential exhibition “I Approve this Message: Decoding Political Ads” launched by HonestAds with The Toledo Museum of Art during 2016.  The exhibit was created to bring you into-the-know so that you’ll never look at political campaigning in quite the same way again.  Winner of numerous awards, the exhibit is currently being updated for 2020 and adding new elements that relate to the impact of new media on election outcomes.

For more information contact: [email protected]

SIX TECHNIQUES USED IN POLITICAL ADS TO PERSUADE YOU

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WANT TO BRING PEOPLE OVER TO YOUR WAY OF THINKING?

No doubt, you made a fact-based, purely rational decision as to who you would support for president.   Actually . . . that’s not likely.

Over the past two decades neuroscientists, psychologists, and political behaviorists have recognized that we feel before we think . . . that we are predisposed to our political choices . . . and that we make decisions on emotional levels that are below our own awareness.*  No, we can’t be directed like robots, but we can be influenced and, ultimately, persuaded in ways we may not be comfortable acknowledging.

Think about the your major life choices.  While listing the pros and cons of the car you purchased, the home you bought, the person you married, the school you or you children attended, inevitably, the final decision was made based on your “feelings.”

Marketers have long known this; some politicians are just catching up.  Fear, anger, hope, pride – pulling at the heartstrings is far more compelling than a list of statistics or complex detail.  You’ll see this played out in the advertising running throughout the 2016 presidential campaign.

To help, there are the rationality-defying creative tools of audio, visual and motion. These result in the patriotic or anxiety-inducing music; the carefully selected imagery; the unflattering camera angles of the opponent.  Also cueing your emotions are six techniques that are meant to move you persuasively — over to their side.

  1. Association

Association links the candidate to something or someone you emotionally connect with from personal experience.   The association may be negative, like putting opposing candidate X in the same image as bad person Y;  or it may be positive, images of all the young people who have benefited from Z policy.

  1. Confusion

Confusion ignores the real concern and replaces, juxtaposes or makes inferences so you are distracted from the original concrete issue.   Candidates may confuse you about their own stands or confuse you about those of their opponents.

  1. Contrast

Contrast uses opposing elements to clarify and drive a point home based on actual or perceived differences.   The contrast can be real or it can be deceptive, for example, taking words or photos out of context or simply comparing non-existing facts.

  1. Omission

Omission ignores the key parts of a story that weaken the candidate’s case and, sometimes, even adds unrelated information to strengthen it.

  1. Repetition

Repetition is showing and saying the same thing over and over again so that it becomes “sticky,” gaining traction and becoming believable over time or quickly over the Internet.  Repetition increases impact and aids memorability.

  1. Transformation

Transformation uses all the creative tools in the visual and audio arsenal to alter a person, situation, comment, or image so that it is changed to seem like something it actually is not.   This is used sometimes not-so-subtly by the candidates and to the outrageous ultimate in political parody ads.

This is not to suggest tuning out the politicians’ ads.  The ads can be educational and provide important information that you may need or want to know.  Watch them.  But beware. The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that political advertising is governed by First Amendment free speech, making it legal to lie in national political advertising.

If you mix deception with the persuasive emotional tools and techniques at the politicians’ disposal, you are up against a powerful combination – one that can truly challenge every voter’s objectivity . . . including your own.

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* Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, author of “Thinking. Fast and Slow”; neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, author of “Self Comes to Mind” and “Constructing the Conscious Brain”; political scientists and authors Ted Brader, “Campaigning for Hearts and Minds”; Milton Lodge and Charles S. Taber, “The Rationalizing Voter”.  Persuasive techniques informed by literature professor Hugh Rank, NCTE Committee on Public Doublespeak Intensify/Downplay Schema.

HOW DO YOU VOTE — WITH YOUR HEART OR YOUR HEAD?

PIC 1EXHIBITION EXPLORES HOW YOUR HEART — NOT YOUR HEAD — IS IMPACTED BY POLITICAL ADS

New York City:   So … you think you vote with your head?  Tackling this question is a thought-provoking non-partisan exhibit – I APPROVE THIS MESSAGE:  Decoding Political Ads — which opened July 14, 2016 at the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, and ran through Election Day, November 8thThe goal is to bring viewers into-the-know about the persuasive techniques of political advertising so that they never watch political ads in the same way again.  The plan is for the exhibit to travel to other museums and institutions prior to the next national election.  With its modular video and digital makeup, the exhibit has flexibility for spaces of any size or configuration.

The exhibit showcases more than 50 of the most emotional ads from 1952, when political ads first started running on TV, up to today.  It includes:

  • 4 individual theaters, FEAR, ANGER, PRIDE, HOPE, displaying ads one-after-another.
  • A MOOD ROOM dares visitors not to feel emotion in a V-shaped theater with 9’ high screens awash with dramatic imagery cut to expressive audio.
  • 17 seven ft. high, annotated ads with frame-by-frame persuasive techniques called-out.
  • A CHANGE theater, demonstrating how targeted messaging and media have changed with the times.
  • A TIMELINE along a 50 ft. wall shows the evolution of political ads organized by news events, advertising and politics, laws and political spending, and technology.
  • I-CANDIDATE and ADMAKER let viewers put what they learned into practice as they create their own ads.
  • VISUAL LITERACY iconography helps viewers understand how to identify read and understand images – whether in art or in advertising.

Visitors are introduced to the imagery, music, sound effects, camerawork, words, and phrases that are used to stir the heartstrings and capture their vote, and they actually experience how rational decision-making is often overridden by emotions.

According to the co-curators, Harriett Levin Balkind, founder of HonestAds.org, and Adam Levine, assistant director of the Toledo Museum of Art: “This exhibition is grounded in studies conducted over the past 20 years that show we feel before we think; facts don’t change minds; and we vote based on emotion rather than issues. Political ads are consciously constructed to evoke specific emotions in viewers. The ad-makers know that our hearts rule our heads.  Here you see how it’s done.”

“Our goal is to increase visual literacy as it relates to advertising,” explains Brian Kennedy, director of the Toledo Museum of Art. Visual literacy is the ability to read, comprehend and write visual language – or the ability to identify, read and understand images and their sometimes covert or culturally influenced meanings. This exhibition looks at all the tools used by political advertising to induce particular emotions.”

The nonpartisan exhibition is organized by the Toledo Museum of Art and HonestAds who commissioned Thinc Design as the exhibition design firm and JET Design for the video installation.

CONTACT:  Harriett Levin Balkind, [email protected], 917-774-4999 (cell

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BACKGROUND

Based in New York, HonestAds builds awareness about political advertising in innovative, compelling ways with organizations that care about political literacy and through its website HonestAds.org. HonestAds’ purpose is to decrease deception, increase critical thinking and expand civility; thereby, motivating more people to vote. As a nonpartisan nonprofit, HonestAds has no connection to political parties, candidates, PACs, super PACs or their sponsors.

On 36 park-like acres the Toledo Museum of Art is known for its internationally significant art collection and acclaimed architecture with spectacular buildings from two Pritzker Prize-winning architects and their Main Museum with a Greek Ionic façade.  It’s metro-wide community support and engagement is second only to the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. It has garnered national media praise and won travel awards as a not-to-be-missed destination.  It is a nonprofit arts institution.

Located in New York, Thinc Design is a leading design firm serving clients in North America, Asia, Africa and Europe. For more than 20 years, Thinc has designed projects for a wide range of institutions, including museums, science centers, aquariums, zoos, theme parks, corporations and governments. Notable projects include the American Food 2.0. USA Pavilion, 2015 World Expo; exhibition design for the Smithsonian Institution; the National Sept. 11 Memorial Museum; and the California Academy of Sciences.

The Exhibit’s Mood Room video environment was designed and produced by JET Design, from Brooklyn, NY. JET was founded by video installation designer, Jason Tschantré, and the Mood Room was created in collaboration with independent filmmaker Scott Foley, and audio design team, The End. JET Design creates immersive audio-visual spaces for Museums, Theater, Musical Performances, and Live Events.

Toledo, Ohio, is in a swing county, Lucas, in a swing state, where in 2012 more women (66%); more non-Hispanic blacks (72%) and more Ohioans (68.3%) voted than the national average.

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