Do You Agree That Political Microtargeting Signals the Dehumanization of Politics?

Do you agree that political microtargeting signals the dehumanization of politics?

Political microtargeting is a computational tool used by the political parties in the election campaigns to categorize voters into different groups according to their specific characteristics. While we agree that political microtargeting signals the dehumanization of politics, there are many positive aspects that acknowledge the contribution of microtargeting in the economy.

The reason why microtargeting indicates the dehumanization of politics is that it analyzes the voters and categorizes them according to their family sizes, spending patterns, specific behaviours and choices, and so forth, which touches on the surface of people's privacy. This is accomplished through transactional and analytical information. Essentially, transactional information contains all the records of single business process or unit of work; in other words, these information are enough to describe people's daily life, such as what they bought using credit cards, when they went to work by using clock on system, and where they went by taking airline service. Analytical information then organizes transactional information to support the performance of managerial analysis. After, political parties send them personalized messages to influence a favorable vote out of them just so they can win the election. Furthermore, they use power and money to implement and handle this information without regards to the voters' rights. Moreover, analyzing data and calculating voters' responses before the election does not sound ethical. It is not fair to the voters and it is not a fair way to gain their votes in order to win the election. It invades on their privacy to be spied on in that manner and having their information be used that way. It might very well be considered illegal since privacy rights are a general law.

In contrast, microtargeting displays many more positive characteristics that overshadow the downside of using this tool. To begin with, microtargeting has become popular in the election because it helps the candidates identify potential swing voters whom have not yet been recognized by the traditional database. This increases the probability of candidates getting more votes and winning the election. For example, in the case of U.S President Barack Obama, his team captured and analyzed massive information from different levels, formats, and granularities in order to locate potential voters. As a result, they found out that only one to two thousand voters could prove decisive in helping him win and according this information level, they just needed to identify a small fraction of the voting public. Then, they had used gigantic databases, such as demographic details to evaluate these target voters to eventually recognize them. Specifically, as stated in the article, "Throughout Obama's historic campaign he used the internet not only for social networking and fund raising, but also to identify potential swing voters...both political parties hired technology wizards to help sift through the mountains of consumer and demographic details to recognize these important voters"(reference