Guest Posting: The Victory Lab visits PPLS Oct 4, 2012

Photo courtesy of Jacob Canter

Guest posting by Jacob Canter, Reed junior and PPLS Steering Committee:

Sasha Issenberg, dressed in a dark blazer and sporting a five o’clock shadow, was speaking at Reed College to talk about his new book The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns. However–as some in the audience expected–this was not to be a discussion on the merits of new media.

Rather, Issenberg’s talk focused on two contemporary political phenomena. The first is about the use of field experimentation and controlled scientific analysis in campaigns. The second is about the explosive rise in information campaigns now have about voters. A combination of test two phenomena has made all parties more effective at reaching their constituencies. For the few people who actually enjoy political campaigns becoming more active, this is undoubtedly a good thing.

But of course, many are not as excited to hear about this newly armed and fully operational battle-(campaign)-station. Two questions during  the Q/A were related to this concern. The first was about the striking lack of privacy it appears weall now have. Campaigns go through thousands of pieces of information to produce a character image that describes exactly who they think we are. Should we be concerned about what these private groups having all this knowledge? The second was about what this new behavior is doing to democracy. If campaigns continue to micro-target, are we no longer becoming a country under a single leader? What is there to stop campaigns from changing the message for every voter, until politics has less to do with compromise than
kowtowing.

Issenberg’s response was essentially that such concerns miss the point. In the US, we have been very willing to give up our information for common conveniences (think about
how much Google knows about us), and campaigns have always kowtowed to specific interests. The mere fact that campaigns are much better at this now than twenty years ago does not suddenly make it a problem. Rather, it means that campaigns are suddenly taking their jobs much more seriously, and that our future political leaders will be determined by who can appreciate the power of these tools. Rather than bemoan the existence of these tools, we should appreciate their existence, and be conscience of their
effects.

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