Researchers have warned of a new form of "government influence," which uses sensitive personal data to create campaigns aimed at changing behavior.
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National and local governments have turned to targeted advertising on search engines and social media platforms to try to "control" the country's behavior more generally, academics have found.
The shift to this new governance brand stems from a marriage between the introduction of push theory into policymaking and an online advertising infrastructure that provides unforeseen opportunities for executing behavior-adjusting campaigns.
Some of the examples found by the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR) range from a prevention scheme to stop young people becoming online fraudsters to tips on how to properly light a candle. While targeted advertising is common across businesses, one researcher argues that the government using it to drive behavioural change could create a perfect feedback loop.
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The examples of government influence uncovered by the SCCJR are many and varied. At one end of the spectrum is the National Crime Agency’s “Cyber-Prevent” program, which involves identifying young people at risk of becoming involved in cybercrime.
Some arms of the program include traditional visits, where NCA officers make a home visit to try to work with the young person's parents to guide them into a different life.
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But this part of the program also involves the NCA collecting a significant amount of data on the young people it visits, which can be used to create profiles of the typical “at risk” teenager. These profiles can then be used to run an “influence policing” campaign, using targeted ads aimed at UK teenagers who are interested in gaming and are searching for specific cybercrime services on Google.
Source of information: theguardian.com
