IB Digital Society 4.6A Political Processes Notes

4.6A Political Processes

1. The organising concept is power. Digital tools can spread it outward, letting ordinary people organise and be heard. They can also concentrate it, because whoever controls the platforms and data steers what people see. Digital democracy is the term for this mix of promise and risk.
2. Keep the two halves apart: impacts (changes already here, e.g. an online petition or internet vote) versus implications (wider consequences, e.g. manipulation, exclusion, or collapse of trust).
3. Content topics meeting here: media and networks carry political speech, data and artificial intelligence target and persuade, and values and ethics run throughout.

Participation and Activism Online

1. Digital activism uses social media, online petitions, and messaging to inform, organise, and mobilise people fast and cheaply.
2. A single post can cascade across a network to millions before officials respond, and movements coordinate protests across borders. Through space, organising is not tied to a place; through expression and power, voices once shut out of traditional media can be heard.
3. The same ease has limits: low-effort clicks (slacktivism) may not yield real change, platforms amplify outrage and lock people into echo chambers, and states can monitor or shut down the networks activists rely on.
4. Impacts: mobilisation is faster, broader, cheaper. Implications: shallow engagement, polarisation, and organisers exposed to surveillance.

Data-Driven Campaigns

1. Microtargeting uses profiles built from online behaviour to show each group the political message most likely to move it.
2. This is a modern form of propaganda: one campaign quietly sends tailored, sometimes contradictory messages to separate groups through their private feeds.
   1. The Cambridge Analytica scandal (broke 2018, misuse of Facebook data from the 2016 US election and Brexit) showed how far this could go and how invisible it can be.
3. Through power, whoever holds the data and targeting tools gains a quiet advantage; through values and ethics, hidden, contradictory messages strain the idea of an open, shared political debate.
4. Impacts: campaigning is sharper, cheaper, more persuasive. Implications: manipulation, loss of a common public conversation, and harvesting personal data for political ends.

Disinformation and Elections

1. Misinformation is false information shared without intent to deceive; deliberate is disinformation; a deepfake is AI-generated audio or video faking a real person.
2. The 2024 wave of elections was a live test: a robocall using an AI-cloned voice of Joe Biden told New Hampshire voters to stay home; AI-edited clips circulated in India and Indonesia.
   1. Contested: studies afterwards found the measurable effect was smaller than feared, and outright fakes were only part of a messier picture.
3. The deeper danger is the liar's dividend: once people know any clip could be fake, they dismiss real evidence as fabricated. Through values and ethics this erodes shared facts; through power the flood of doubt favours whoever benefits from confusion.
4. Impacts: scattered incidents plus rising distrust. Implications: telling true from false gets harder, pressure grows for labelling and regulation, and cynicism spreads.

Voting and Governing Online

1. E-government delivers public services online, and some states let citizens vote over the internet.
2. Estonia is the clearest example: almost all services online, binding votes from any connected device. Done well it cuts cost, speeds services, and can lift participation for people far from a polling station or living abroad.
3. Through systems, an online election must be both secret and verifiable (a difficult combination), and one flaw or outage affects everyone at once; through power, it matters who runs and can audit the system.
4. Impacts: convenience, speed, and, in places, higher turnout. Implications: security and verifiability risks, exclusion of those without access or skills, and reliance on the systems simply working.

Weighing a Contested Balance

1. Two-sided story: digital systems can widen participation, open up information, and ease voting. The same systems can also manipulate voters, deepen the digital divide, and corrode democratic trust.
2. Contested: what a platform does to democracy comes down to design, regulation, data transparency, verifiable elections, and inclusion. Which of these outcomes results depends mainly on who sets the rules the technology enforces.