Candidates and interest groups are using increasingly sophisticated methods to find and target likely voters online.
Whether shopping, emailing, Facebooking or jamming to Garth Brooks on Pandora, Americans are encountering election ads targeted to them at nearly every turn.
At ProPublica, we’ve been digging into the new techniques, documenting the nuances of email marketing with our Message Machine project and exploring how campaigns (and interest groups) are targeting voters based on their surfing habits.
But how exactly do campaigns define and track voters? How much do they really know about us? And what privacy issues does it raise? Join us for a live discussion of campaign ads in the 2012 election this Friday on Google Plus.
When: Friday, Aug. 10, 1 p.m. ET
Where: ProPublica + Google Plus
Who:
Lois Beckett reports on technology and privacy issues in the 2012 campaign for ProPublica
Jeff Larson manages ProPublica’s Message Machine project, collecting and analyzing hundreds of campaign emails
Daniel Kreiss, an assistant professor in journalism at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, studies politics and digital media
Joseph Turow, associate dean for graduate studies at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, studies digital media and marketing industries.
What questions do you have about campaign ad targeting? Circle ProPublica on Google Plus to pose your questions for our panel (or post them in the comments below). We hope to see you Friday.
