Midterm Elections: NYU Tandon experts see patterns in social media political ads
Candidates in the upcoming midterm elections are spending billions of dollars on television, radio, out-of-home and on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. An analysis of four key senate races by NYU Tandon cybersecurity and privacy expert Damon McCoy opens a keyhole into who on the left and right is spending what on which messages.
Research by McCoy and his team at the Cybersecurity for Democracy (C4D) program at Tandon shows that, among other things, social media spend by mid-term candidates in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia — states where control of congress hangs in the balance — suggests Democrats are outspending Republicans on Meta (formerly Facebook) with ads on Facebook and Instagram focused on generating political donations.
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McCoy, professor of computer science and engineering at NYU Tandon and Director C4D has been taking a hard look at how candidates across the board are spending on social media. The question is critical because, as McCoy and Laura Edelson, a former Ph.D. student (now post-doctoral researcher) have shown, the social platforms like Facebook and Tik Tok are not doing a good job flagging ads featuring misleading and outright false political information. Since the 2016 election, McCoy and Edelson have, in fact, been researching this phenomenon: how social media and their algorithms let anonymous advertisers target users in order to spread misinformation.