The campaign for Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is working with a British data company called Cambridge Analytica to develop behavior-based models of American voters. Nick Beauchamp, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science answers the question: is the so-called "voter microtargeting" the new wave of political campaigning?
The campaign for Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is working with a British data company called Cambridge Analytica to develop behavior-based models of American voters.
Created in 2013, the so-called “psychographic” firm collects up to 5,000 data points on every U.S. voter and uses the results of a survey of up to 50,000 people per month to predict their personality type.
When a Cruz campaign worker knocks on a voter’s door, the campaigner knows who the voter is, what issues he cares about, and how to persuade him into voting for the Texas senator.
Is this so-called “voter microtargeting” the new wave of political campaigning? We asked Nick Beauchamp, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and a core faculty member in the NULab for Texts, Maps and Networks who studies how political opinions form and change as a result of discussion, deliberation, and argument.
Read the full story at news@Northeastern
