It is now widely supposed in many democracies that the modern political campaign needs to be “data driven” to consolidate existing support and to find potential new voters and donors. The capture of data on political opinions and affiliation permits the construction of profiles on individual voters and the “micro-targeting” of increasingly precise messages to increasingly refined segments of the electorate. 

To what extent should modern campaigns be allowed to “know” the electorate? The answer to this question relies to some extent on privacy and data protection rules, based on principles of notice and consent. But the answer also relies on deeper theoretical issues concerning democracy and political culture. How can we understand the development of data-driven elections in western democracies in broader theoretical terms? And what factors should, and will, shape the entrance and impact of micro-targeting practices into different Western democracies?

We would like to invite you to this event by Dr. Colin Bennett who is a professor for political science at the University of Victoria (Canada). His research focuses on social implications of new information technologies and on the development and implementation of privacy protection policies at the domestic and international level. He is probably most well-known for an early book on the Governance of Privacy (2006) and for his study on the Privacy Advocates (2008), a very insightful inquiry into the formation of Civil Society Actors in the field of digital politics. 

External participants please register at:

veranstaltungen-weizenbaum[at]wzb.eu