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The complaint appears to be that it is difficult to engage in traditional "assertion-rebuttal" debate via facebook advertising. My understanding is that all ca
by _rpd 9y ago
The complaint appears to be that it is difficult to engage in traditional "assertion-rebuttal" debate via facebook advertising. My understanding is that all campaigns are free to target any demographic, so a "best foot forward" competition is still possible. It seems to me that the shift in debate model is more a threat to a particular political marketing specialty than to democracy as a whole.
- mattnewton 9y agoA possible counter argument is unlike television advertising buys, the targeting is incredibly specific. The chances of you being able to match your opponents targeting are much smaller, which leaves slices of populations hearing only one side. And like the article points out, the inefficiencies (from the campaign's point of view) of the current targeting may be doing an overall service to democracy by giving populations a message they wouldn't otherwise hear. There is a lot of hand waving in this argument but I'm convinced we should attempt to solidify what effects are there and whether we find them valuable before dismissing it.
- _rpd 9y agoIt's possible that advertising buys won't overlap completely, but as the targeting gets more specific, the targeted slice gets smaller and smaller ... to the point where it is questionable that the slice can have an electoral impact even if the lack of explicit rebuttal has a significant impact on the opinions of the targeted slice. Assertion-rebuttal is an effective rhetorical technique, but it is certainly not the only technique. Honestly, familiarity with the candidate's name seems to dominate everything else. Perhaps I'm underestimating the impact of unchallenged claims, but even in that case both sides are still on a level playing field.