News reports on targeted advertising in recent political campaign cycles highlight a tension between practitioners and their critics. Critics express concern that the results of  microtargeting that addresses people as persona created as a result of the collection of  demographic, psychographic, behavioral, social network, and purchasing data, will be to ignore large portions of the population – or tell others just what they want to hear. Moreover, vast, computer driven niche targeting and personalization will make it nearly impossible for journalists to report to larger publics on the contours of the campaigns that are being waged house-by-house, person-by-person. Practitioners, meanwhile, point to the increased turnout over the last decade as evidence that personalized messages are providing the public with a reason to care after decades of undifferentiated, mass public broadcast air wars. Panelists will explore the potential implications, positive and negative, of the increasing personalization of political advertising messages.

Panelists:

Colin Delany (Founder and Editor, Epolitics.com) (click for bio) @epolitics

Zeynep Tufekci (Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) (click for bio) @techsoc

Ethan Roeder (Director of Data, Obama for America) (click for bio)

Brent McGoldrick (Managing Director, FTI Consulting) (click for bio) @brentmcgoldrick

Moderator: Michael X. Delli Carpini, Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication