Can facebook affect an election campaign?

As the UK prepares for an election on 12 December, we look back at CAGE research investigating what effects our voting choices.

Michela Redoano and her co-authors (Federica Liberini, Antonio Russo, Ángel Cuevas Rumin and Ruben Cuevas Rumin) investigated the extent and intensity of Facebook political campaigns in the run up to the 2016 US election, and evaluated the effect these campaigns had on voting preferences. They found that Facebook adverts had a significant effect in persuading undecided voters to support Trump and in persuading Republican supporters to turn out on election day. They had no effect on Clinton's side.

Read the research:

Michela Redoano, Politics in the Facebook era: Examining the effects of voter 'micro-targeting' in the 2016 US presidential election, Advantage Magazine, Spring 2019, issue 7.

Federica Liberini, Michela Redoano, Antonio Russo, Ángel Cuevas Rumin, Ruben Cuevas Rumin, Politics in the Facebook era: How reading political ads on Facebook affects our voting behaviour (...and helped Trump to win the presidential election), CAGE Background Briefing Series no. 90, November 2018

Federica Liberini, Michela Redoano, Antonio Russo, Angel Cuevas and Ruben Cueva, Politics in the Facebook Era Evidence from the 2016 US Presidential Elections, CAGE Working paper series no. 389, October 2018.