Robert Gebelhoff

[Commentary]  Not only has voter participation in local elections fallen to dangerously low levels, but the health of local newspapers, traditional watchdogs for the most direct and abundant form of government in the United States, has also been deteriorating. The Republican Party — yes, the same party whose leader derides the media as “fake news” and “the enemy of the people”  — should be particularly alarmed.

[Commentary] The Internet is rapidly transforming our political campaigns. But as social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter further entrench people into “echo chambers” where they hear more and more of the things they already agree with, is that a good thing? There are a number of reasons a shift toward online advertising will have a huge impact on how people consume political media:

• It’s cheap and easy to implement. Anyone, in theory, has equal access to having a voice online.
• There’s no limit to airtime on the Internet. A candidate’s reach is bounded only by the following they can build.
• Companies such as Alphabet and Facebook can use data to let sophisticated advertisers target voters at a granular level. As a result, advertisers can tailor their messages to closely fit voters’ perspectives viewpoints, which theoretically will let candidates effectively mobilize specific populations to spend money or vote.

So far, the Federal Election Commission has refused to expand its scope to regulating online ads. Political action committees are required to disclose who’s behind the ads only if they were bought on websites. At the moment, free online media accounts — such as YouTube, Facebook or Instagram — are fairly unregulated territory. The result is a media environment in which consumers receive information that’s increasingly designed specifically for them — but they might not be able to tell where it’s coming from.