Social Media and Political Propaganda: From Manipulation to Censorship

Abstract: The Internet Age heralded at the end of the 1990s foresaw enormous social changes. Manuel Castells held that these changes would transform the way in which we communicate. The growth of social media went through a turning point with the appearance of smartphones in 2007. Since 2000, political campaigns realized that the web was a new platform through which to promote candidates using political propaganda. By 2007-2008, Obama’s Presidential Campaign, using a skillful microtargeting strategy, together with other strategies, was able to position Obama as a candidate and rise to victory. The milestone that this successful campaign represented, forced many candidates to recognize that it was indispensable to use a digital propaganda strategy. The Presidential Campaign that took Trump to victory raised widespread discussion about the role played by Cambridge Analytica, which, with Facebook’s support, gained access to the information of millions of users. Subsequently, the impeachment inquiry against President Trump led to a debate regarding the participation of Russian hackers through promotion campaigns favoring the Republican candidate. These two phenomena will be discussed since they continue to generate an intense debate about the role played by social media in manipulating the electorate and the need for regulating social networks.

Key words: political campaigns, political propaganda, social media, framing, priming

JEL code: Z