Political Scholars, NGOs Call on Facebook, Digital Industry to Support Rules for Political Campaigns
Released on September 22, 2017 at a political microtargeting conference held in Amsterdam, in response to the recent announcement by Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg on changes to how they conduct political ad campaigns.
Dear Mark,
Your statements on Facebook’s new policies for political advertising were issued as we started a global symposium on micro-targeting in Amsterdam (https://www.ivir.nl/amsterdam-symposium-on-political-micro-targeting/ (link is external)). We are a group of leading international academic experts and civil society representatives from the fields of law, communication, political science and economics who are conducting research on political targeting.
Fairness, equality and democratic oversight are key in democratic societies. We appreciate the initiative you have taken and strongly encourage further dialogue and action. Moving this forward we strongly believe that the principles of transparency and disclosure are essential. Facebook should share publicly the full range of paid political contents, disclose the sponsoring actors, and identify the categories of target audiences. This should be done globally as this is an issue that affects elections worldwide. We encourage you and other platforms and actors to join this dialogue to contribute principles for transparency and disclosure.
Transparency is a first step in the right direction. Digital political advertising operates in a dynamic tension between data and humans, commerce and politics, power and participation. Some of these tensions can be resolved by transparency, others not. The way forward is to engage with governments, regulators, election monitoring bodies, civil society and academics to develop public policies and guidelines for ensuring fairness, equality, and democratic oversight in digital political campaigns.
Can we count on you?
Natali Helberger
Institute for Information Law (IViR), University of Amsterdam
Claes de Vreese
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam
Balazs Bodo
Institute for Information Law (IViR), University of Amsterdam
Mauricio Moura
George Washington University
Max von Grafenstein
Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin
Jessica Schmeiss
Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society
Sabrina Sassi
Universite Laval
Tom Dobber
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam
Jeff Chester
Center for Digital Democracy, Washington, DC
Kathryn Montgomery
American University, Washington, DC
André Haller
Institut für Kommmunikationswissenschaft, Universität Bamberg
Damian Tambini
Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science
Simon Krischinski
Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mains
Daniel Kreiss
School of Media and Journalism, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
