Social Media and Politics - The UK's New Digital Left: Paid Social, Civic Tech, and Mobilizing the Youth Vote, with Samir Patel

The UK's New Digital Left: Paid Social, Civic Tech, and Mobilizing the Youth Vote, with Samir Patel

07/02/17 • 28 min

Samir Patel, Managing Director at Blue State Digital London, guests this week to discuss how the recent success of the Labour Party in the 2017 British elections was aided by a huge push in digital by the British Left. We discuss the role that Facebook data targeting played in the election - not just from Labour but also advocacy groups. Samir also explains how social media was used to mobilize the British youth vote, how citizens built their own digital tools to campaign (i.e. civic tech), and some transnational differences (and similarities) between campaigning in the United States, United Kingdom, and other parts of the European Union. We also talk about how Brexit and the upcoming negotiations may affect data privacy laws and campaign regulations.

The article that I mention in the introduction can be found on Blue State Digital's website here.

Previous Episode

Who's Targeting You? Facebook Dark Ads in the British Election Campaign, with Sam Jeffers

The Social Media and Politics Podcast is a podcast bringing you innovative, first-hand insights into how social media is changing the political game. Subscribe for interviews and analysis with politicians, academics, and leading industry experts to get their take on how social media influences the ways we engage with politics and democracy.

Connect with us on Twitter @SMandPPodcast & Facebook: Social Media and Politics Podcast

In this episode, Sam Jeffers, co-founder of Who Targets Me, joins the podcast to discuss how sponsored Facebook ads were used by political parties in the 2017 British General Election. Who Targets Me is a project collecting targeted Facebook ads via a Google Chrome extension, and its aim is to shed light on who's posting political dark ads as well as who's being targeted. We discuss the project and what the initial data shows from GE2017.

You can follow Sam on Twitter @wrklsshrd.

Next Episode

Citizen Marketers and the Bernie Sanders Campaign on Social Media, with Dr. Joel Penney

Dr. Joel Penney, Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University, discusses his new book *The Citizen Marketer: Promoting Political Opinion in the Social Media Age*. The book explores how everyday citizens actively assist in the promotion of political messages through their social media activity, following logics of viral marketing to enact persuasion at a peer-to-peer level.

Dr. Penney shares his research on the Bernie Sanders campaign and the role that citizens played on social media, and Facebook in particular, to help the campaign get out its message through official and unofficial channels.

Purchase a copy of The Citizen Marketer: Promoting Political Opinion in the Social Media Age on Amazon here.

Follow Dr. Penney on Twitter @professorpenney.