Can the media sway an election?

ILL EFFECTS

In this bumper Very Special Episode ahead of this week’s UK General Election, we take it in turns to examine whether “the media” can “sway” election results. First, Ben examines the always-silly and sometimes-sinister British tabloid press and their (in)famous claim that it was “The Sun Wot Won It” for John Major in 1992. Rich then looks at Cambridge Analytica, and the claims that its Facebook quizzes helped make Brexit happen. Politics podcasts deserve better: vote for ILL EFFECTS!

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Show Notes: SOURCES AND LINKS:

Afriat, H., et al. (2021) “This is capitalism. It is not illegal”: Users’ attitudes toward institutional privacy following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The Information Society, 37(2).

BBC (2018) “Cambridge Analytica: The data firm's global influence,” BBC News, 22nd March.

BBC (2020) “Cambridge Analytica 'not involved' in Brexit referendum, says watchdog,” BBC News, 7th October.

Berghel, H. (2018) “Malice Domestic: The Cambridge Analytica Dystopia,” Computer, 51(5), May.

Bruns, A. (2019) Are Filter Bubbles Real? Polity Press.

Cadwalladr, C., and Graham-Harrison, E. (2018) “Revealed: 50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach,” The Guardian, 17th March.

Curtice, J. "Was it The Sun wot won it again? The influence of newspapers in the 1997 election campaign." Centre for research into elections and social trends working papers 75 (1999).

De Vany, A. (2004) Hollywood Economics: How extreme uncertainty shapes the film industry. Routledge.

Druckman, J. N. (2005). Media matter: How newspapers and television news cover campaigns and influence voters. Political communication, 22(4), 463-481.

Fuchs, C. (2013) Social Media: A Critical Introduction. Sage.

Gunther, A. C., Perloff, R. M., & Tsfati, Y. (2008). Public opinion and the third-person effect. The SAGE handbook of public opinion research, 184-191.

Heawood, J. (2018) “Pseudo-public political speech: Democratic implications of the Cambridge Analytica scandal,” Information Polity, 23.

Hern, A. (2018) "Cambridge Analytica: how did it turn clicks into votes?” The Guardian, 6th May.

Linton, M. (1996). Maybe The Sun won it after all. British Journalism Review, 7(2), 20-26.

Parliament.UK (2018) “The issue of data targeting, based around the Facebook, GSR and Cambridge Analytica allegations.” Disinformation and ‘fake news’: Interim Report. 29th July.

Price, V., & Feldman, L. (2009). News and politics. The Sage Handbook of Media Processes and Effects. Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 113-129.

Rathi, R. (2019) “Effect of Cambridge Analytica’s Facebook ads on the 2016 US Presidential Election,” Towards Data Science, 13th January.

Reeves, A., McKee, M., & Stuckler, D. (2016). ‘It's The Sun Wot Won It’: Evidence of media influence on political attitudes and voting from a UK quasi-natural experiment. Social science research, 56, 44-57.

Risso, L. (2018) ‘Harvesting Your Soul? Cambridge Analytica and Brexit’ in Jansohn, C. (ed.) Brexit Means Brexit? The Selected Proceedings of the Symposium, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur -- Mainz 6–8 December 2017. Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz.

Strömbäck, J. (2011). Mediatization and perceptions of the media's political influence. Journalism studies, 12(4), 423-439.

Thomas, J. (2007). Popular newspapers, the Labour Party and British politics. Routledge.

Wong, J. C., et al. (2018) “How academic at centre of Facebook scandal tried – and failed – to spin personal data into gold,” The Guardian, 24th April.

Note: Journal articles are often behind paywalls. If you don't have institutional access but would like a copy of these papers please email [e-mail] and we will happily send you a copy 

Episode artwork photo by Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street. Used under Creative Commons license (ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-NODERIVS 2.0 GENERIC).

Credits: 

Hosts – Rich McCulloch and Ben Litherland  

Music by -  Brutalust (Colin Frank and Maria Sappho), recorded and mixed by Joe Christman 

Creative producer – Rachel Wood 

Technical producer – Caroline Pringle 

Technical production – Colin Frank