The Impact Of Information On Domestic Political Process

Information became an inseparable part of human society since its creation,making information communication an essential characteristic of a social system.Following the evolution of human beings,the ways of how information is created,stored and transmitted experienced a lot of changes,and because now society lives in a digital world,surrounded by latest achievements of cybernetics and computer technologies,it is hard to imagine daily life without constant information access.The question of information privacy and information usage in influencing the audience in certain periods of time appeared from news on Cambridge Analytica which was accused in misuse of information,illegal acquisition of private data and use it for changing audience behavior towards candidates during their domestic political elections in a number of countries,and became one of the reasons for conducting this research.Initially political elections as any other political actions remained solely internal issue of the country and they all tried to protect their political actions by prohibiting any foreign involvement of other countries in the election process.Despite that there are always a lot of conversations and rumors spreading on social media regarding political issues,they usually don't go beyond ordinary chats.However,sometimes they are a part of a bigger plan on destabilizing political situation in a country prior to the election dates,but they usually are conducted by societies created solely for this purpose whish later would be dissolved,and previously there hasn't been any evidence of presence of a company which would not only do the political consultancy job,but also will be deeply involved in the election process itself.This led to the primary research question of the research “how did CA influence domestic political elections of some countries?” because this company later was convicted in involvement in internal political elections of different degrees of importance in different states.In previous years Cambridge Analytica was out of particular attention since it didn't show any signs of inappropriate behavior remaining one of many companies which used information for audience analysis,and stated that it helps a client to understand its audience and find a better approach to it.Nowadays there are a lot of companies which use the advantages on digital progress to provide such services for anyone who contacts them,since information provided by common people during surveys and questionnaires turn out to be useful in promoting different types of products and services,and – sometimes – people,when it is about political campaigns.They try to introduce more advanced technologies in their work and get more accurate data,and in digital era the easiest way of doing it is through social media.Common people don't pay attention to what they post on social networks,and usually are not aware of what can happen to this information and who can use it and for which purposes.Many consulting companies even sign official agreements with large social networks like Facebook,Instagram,Tumblr,WhatsApp,and use their platforms for uploading special applications created for collecting a certain type of information.The research question is followed by the hypothesis that presence of information which obtains a certain degree of sensitivity provides an opportunity to generate an information package aimed at particularly selected limited audience,which will have more valuable impact on final results and generate profit for a particular candidate.When part of the obtained information can be characterized as “private” or “personal”,it strengthens the influence on the particular audience due to more narrowed speciality.In case when such “information influence” is conducted under the coordination of highly coordinated center,its results become more predictable and it makes them more beneficial for candidates.This hypothesis relies on the following arguments: 1)according to company's official position,CA was collecting information for any interested party reminding in some way other consulting companies.However statements of former Cambridge Analytica employees reflected that company was working as a political consultant in other countries during different types of elections campaigns,when according to majority of constitutions and domestic laws,intervention of the third-party companies and workers who are citizens of other countries is strictly prohibited;2)working techniques of Cambridge Analytica were aimed on not only on examining the targeted audience and provide the final result to the client,but also they provided services of using data for changing the behavior of the audience necessary for the client.Some of their methods of collecting information were not legal,what later led to one of the major scandal in the history of not only the company,but also in digital world and law regulations on virtual space,information and private data in it:This research is based on data collected on various media sources.Since nowadays technologies allow preserving data in its initial state for a very long time in its initial conditions.A large number of interviews,audio and video recordings as well as textual data were analyzed first of all in order to get understanding about the company itself and its work,as well as get to know the key personalities behind the company's plans who were planning all the work,chose clients and later did the planning and coordination of projects.A particular attention was paid to techniques company introduced in its work in order to improve already existing psychological methods and introduce it in the social media in order to increase the feedback since nowadays provide more accurate results than common manual techniques.Time frames of the current research starts with 2013 when Cambridge Analytica was founded.Even though further examination caused suspicious regarding the foundation year,majority of official sources pointed out this year,what became one of the main reasons for selecting it as a starting point.The research uses 2018 as the peak of the situation when the information leak launched a scandal over the company.2018 also serves as the logical end of the research because of serious of scandals and followed investigations,preventing any further functioning of Cambridge Analytica,company was shut down.For now there is still lack of already conducted research projects on this or similar topics what make it difficult for choosing a theory able to explain this phenomenon.Current research uses constructivism since from all mainstream IR schools it is the best explaining the role of information from perspectives of society.It also uses cultivation theory,introduced by George Gerbner and which is considered to be an improved version of Lasswell's communication theory since it's not only explaining the mechanism of information transmission if the society,but also focuses on what effect it has created.The current research also implements process tracing,description and discourse analysis as methods or research: process-tracing was chosen to examine each of cases Cambridge Analytica was involved separately from its beginning to its end,focusing on the events company worked on;description is used to provide a proper information of phenomenon of information,how it is used by individuals and society,which techniques are used in mass and social media to influence audience through the information message,and provide a detailed description on company and people involved in its work as well as methods and techniques it used;description of background and events during company's involvement in occurred events.Discourse analysis plays one of the most important roles because most of information represents itself media sources(primary sources are also available in free-access sources but due to issues related to usage of documents with “confidential” stated on them which are uploaded online it raises a question about restrictions on their usage).News articles,video and audio recordings of conferences and interviews where Cambridge Analytica was mentioned alone or along with its methods or consultancy involvement.Due to variety of sources,authors' styles,languages and linguistic peculiarities discourse analysis helped a lot not only in selecting but also in organizing material in proper order.The following work consists of six chapters.First chapter is Introduction and presents the main points of the research: research question,arguments supporting introduced hypothesis,reasons for case selection which explain the peculiarities of a selected case in comparison to other,used methodology,which includes several implemented methods(process-tracing,description and discourse analysis);provide a feedback on data and sources collection,and literature review which represented a challenge for current research due to absence of academic literature on this case and similar cases because of the absence of these cases,so the review is mostly represented by literature review of books on theoretical aspects and explanation of information and information society phenomenon,while practical part is left for reviewing articles provided by mass media sources,books,published by company's former employees and statements and copies of testimonies provided by the UK Parliament.Second chapter provides an examination of theories which are possible to be implemented,their advantages and disadvantages due to ability to explain the necessary assumptions.It is divided into three subsections: first one provides an understanding how mainstream IR schools approach the phenomenon of information,and explains why constructivism has more chances in succeeding in it underlining the importance of knowledge,shared ideas and social interactions which have a big impact on information transmission in society and influence of social construction on politics as a whole and on international relations in particular;next two subsections introduce Lasswell's communication model,which uses a five-step model to explain the mechanism of communication process,highlights the importance of “symbols” and mentions of influence of propaganda in terms of information transmission;and cultivation theory,which some scholars consider as derived from Lasswell`s and appeared to be more sustainable.Despite the fact that initially cultivation model was created for examining the influence of television on the audience,it managed to survive for more than forty years and adapt to new types of media emerged after television – computers and social networks.Chapter three explains the phenomenon of information as it's a item of many disciplines,ways of its usage by an individual and also provides opinions of political scholars about information in politics and International Relations.It is divided into five parts.The first part is a general introduction into phenomenon of information: since it is more widely used in technical sciences,most of approaches to it emerged from cybernetics,and later were adapted by politics.Some approaches,however,were borrowed from social sciences(philosophy and psychology in particular).It also examines the history of ways of information transmission focusing on types of information able to be transmitted and transmission mechanisms;starting from the emerging of first verbal types of transmission and ending with digital.Additionally,it provides a detailed description of classification of information depending on its type,transmission requirements,medium and specific characteristics.It also shows how information is used by and how it is influencing society following the technological progress and consists of three subparts.The second part provides the general background on how society uses information and how it in its turn influences society,with a focus on information society phenomenon and its dimensions.The third part examines common and most frequent techniques which people use to make information create an influence,majority of described techniques were chosen from the position of their significance being used in politics.Part four focuses on information,society and politics and shows on examples how: 1)technical progress influence information transmission and it influences society which in turn influences political situation in country;2)how fake or incomplete news influence society and political elite and how presence of fake/incomplete news in their interaction influences political situation in the country,and 3)how late or inaccurate reaction of political elites on information result in decrease of society's approval of government and its actions.The fifth part highlights the role of information in International Relations and outlines its importance for state among the other resources basing on words of different academics and politicians.Chapter four provides a detailed analysis of role of information in domestic politics,separately outlining its position in elections process.This chapter is divided into five parts.The first part introduces the role of information in the decision-making process,which,as it is well-known,is one of the basic elements in conducting politics,no matter if it is international or domestic.The second part explains the phenomenon of political communication – which is based on information and serves as a linkage between elements of the political system and external entities.Part three focuses on position of information in political system as a separately taken phenomenon,indicating its types,existing classifications(with their advantages and disadvantages),and explaining its importance for politics.Part four explains the role of information in the elections process,showing it from the side of politicians – how they use information and influence the audience,and from the side of the audience – how it uses information to influence politicians(in this case – their pre-election promises and campaign programms),and how it reacts on information it receives during elections.The fifth part provides a result of summarized data provided in previous four chapters and explained from the researcher's position.Chapter five provides an examination of Cambridge Analytica: its background,are of work,key people who influences its work,etc.It also provides explanation of methods the company used and examines if there was a “Russian trail” that many media sources claimed to be.This chapter consists of four subsections.Subsection one provides a general insight on company's background and controversies around its independence;also it talks about the scandal company got involved from March 2018 involving private data acquiring and involvement in elections in several countries across the world as non-official consultant with experience in microtargeting and audience analysis,and ending with company's shut-down.Subsection two shows the key figures influenced the company's work,which involved not only company former employees,two of which later became whistleblowers exposing company's internal affairs to mass media sources,but also a family of a famous millionaire known for his interests in politics and a person who later will become a chief strategist and senior counselor to newly elected president of the USA.Subsection three goes deep into details of company's techniques on data mining and data analytics,using as an example senator Ted Cruz's political campaign and Trinidad and Tobago General Elections;explains the phenomenon of Big Data and its importance of audience analysis;examines how social network applications collect data using as an example one of CA applications it used on Facebook.Subsection four discusses the involvement of Aleksandr Kogan,psychologist whose research interests are exploring prosocial emotional processes across a variety of intra-and interpersonal contexts.Many media sources called him “the Russian trail” to Cambridge Analytica mostly because of his background(born in Moldova which at that time was a part of the USSR).He has been a director of Global Science Research,a company which was suspected in involvement in illegal collecting of private information from Facebook users.Chapter six examines the involvement of company in domestic politics of foreign countries using several of them as examples.It consists of four parts – three countries' cases and summary of them examined through the theory introduced in chapter two to derive a common pattern and point out key points in each work: time frames,position of company in election campaign hierarchy,projects it was coordinating and/or working on,starting resources;also problems that company faced during work.Each case is supported with statistics reflecting media coverage of the country,candidate's popularity ratings and overall usage of mass media and social networks.Countries chosen for examining CA's involvement are Kenya,Nigeria and the USA.Kenya and the USA were chosen due to 1)wide coverage of their elections in the media provided a big source basis for analysis;2)their success in terms of that the candidate they worked for won the elections;Nigeria was chosen because it was a challenge for a company and even though the candidate lost,still company managed to fulfill its general task on improving his image for the audience.Also they were chosen because of constant mentioning in books published by two former Cambridge Analytica employees Brittany Kaiser and Christopher Wylie which present company's point of view on conducted work.Chapter seven provides a conclusion to the thesis and summarizes the conducted research,outlining its main points and providing answer on settled research question.