Hello. Thank you for inviting me to speak today.
I am an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa. I completed my doctoral work at the University of Oxford. My research focuses on political communication in a digital media environment. I've examined issues such as the political uses of artificial intelligence and political bots, echo chambers, and citizens' perceptions of social media data use by third parties, such as government, journalists and political parties.
My research has been conducted in Canada and internationally, but today I want to speak about four things: first, analog versus digital voter-targeting strategies; second, changing definitions of political advertisements; third, self-regulation of platforms; and fourth, artificial intelligence.
I have one quick note. I'll use the term “platform” throughout my testimony today. When I do, I'm referring to technology platform companies, including social media, search engines and others.
Let's start with voter targeting. This is by no means a new phenomenon. It's evolving at a spectacular rate, though. It is typical and in fact considered quite useful for a political party to collect information by going door to door in a community and asking people if they plan to vote and who for. In some cases, they may also ask what issues a citizen cares about. This helps political parties learn how to direct their limited resources. It also helps citizens connect with their political system.
However, even with this analog approach, there are concerns, because disengagement of voters and discrimination can be exacerbated. For example, if certain groups are identified as unlikely voters, they are then essentially ignored for potentially the remainder of the campaign.
Digital data collection can amplify these issues and present new challenges. I see four key differences in the evolving digital context as opposed to that analog one I briefly outlined.
First, there are meaningful differences between digital and analog data. The speed and scope of data collection is immense. While data collection used to require a lot of human resources, it now can be done automatically through sophisticated tools. I believe that last week you heard from a number of people who described the ones that political parties are using currently.
Similarly, this data can now more easily be joined with other datasets, such as credit history or other personal information that citizens may not want political parties or political entities to be using. It can also be more easily shared and transported and more easily searched, and predictive analytics can be employed because there is so much more data and there are so many more kinds of data that they can be collected together and analyzed very quickly.
Second, citizens may no longer be aware when their data is being collected and used. Unlike when they had to answer the door to give out personal information, this now can be done without their knowledge. They may not even know what is technically possible. In a study of Canadian Internet users, my colleagues at Ryerson University and I found that most Canadians are uncomfortable with political uses of even publicly available social media data. For me, this signals a need to really think about what kinds of data citizens would actually want their political representatives to have and to be using.
Third, the uses of data are evolving. Since online advertisements, for example, can now target niche audiences, personal data has become more useful to political entities. At the same time, these uses are less transparent to regulators and less clear to citizens. This means that emerging uses could be breaking existing laws, but they're so hard to trace that we don't know. We need to have increased transparency and accountability in order to respond adequately.
Fourth, political entities are incentivized to collect data continually, not solely during an election campaign. This means that existing elections laws could be insufficient. I should note that it is not just political parties that are collecting this kind of data, but also non-profits, unions and other third parties, so the questions about how this data is collected and what is the responsible use have to be broader than simply political parties writ large.
These changes are particularly concerning, then, because many of these uses aren't covered by existing privacy laws, and the Privacy Commissioner doesn't have the tools needed to make sure those laws are enforced the way they were intended.
This data use is not all bad. There are a lot of positive uses, including increasing voter turnout and trying to combat voter apathy. That said, to balance things we need to make sure we include political parties under the personal data uses laws that we have, PIPEDA being the main one. We need to create provisions that ensure transparency and accountability for political uses of data, and we need to ensure that citizens are literate, which includes things like having better informed-consent statements and other media and digital literacy initiatives.
With the few minutes I have left, I want to talk about a few issues that stem from this targeted voter behaviour. First is political advertisement. It's no longer quite as clear-cut as it once was. In addition to the placement cost for what platforms might call advertisements, there are a bunch of other ways that political entities can have paid content show up in somebody's newsfeed or as a recommended video, and how algorithms can be gamed to make sure that certain pieces of content show up on people's screens.
Those might include something like sponsored stories, using brand ambassadors, renting social media accounts that already have a big following, or employing political bots to help disseminate information more widely. All of these could be done potentially for free but they could also be done on a paid basis, and when they're paid, that comes awfully close to advertising, under the spirit of the law.
In response, we need to redefine what constitutes a political advertisement in order to continue enforcing these existing laws and their intended outcomes. It's particularly important that we consider this when we look at the worldwide increase in instant messaging platform use. The ways that political parties and other political entities are using instant messaging platforms is a lot harder to track than the ways social media platforms are used, and we can expect that is going to increase.
Second, I want to talk about self-regulation and how it is insufficient when we're talking about the big platform companies. While they have been responding, these are reactionary responses. These are not proactive responses to the threat that we see when digital data is being collected and personal information is being stored. These companies need to be responsible for the content that shows up, what they allow to show up, on their platforms. We also need to make sure that any interactions they have with those data are transparent and accountable. Right now there is a black box. We don't know how Facebook or Google decides what shows up and what doesn't, and we can't allow that to continue when things like personal privacy, hate speech, and free speech are being called into question.
Finally, the use of artificial intelligence is already complicating matters. The typical narrative at the moment is that when learning algorithms are used, it is impossible to open that black box and unpack what's happened and why. While this may be true if you take a very narrow technical perspective, there are in fact steps we can take to make the use of AI more transparent and accountable.
For example, we could have clearer testing processes, where data is open for government and/or academics to double-check procedures. There could be regular audits of algorithms, the way financial audits are required, and documented histories of the algorithm development, including information about how decisions were made by the team and its members and why. We also need things like clearer labelling of automated accounts on social media or instant messaging applications, and registrations of automated digital approaches to voter contact. You could imagine a voter contact registry being modified to include digital automated approaches. As well, we need widespread digital literacy programs that really dig into how these digital platforms work so that citizens can be empowered to demand the protection they deserve.
Ultimately I see a lot of value in political uses of digital data, but those uses must be transparent and accountable in order to protect the privacy of Canadians and the integrity of Canadian democracy. This requires privacy laws to be updated and applied to political parties, the Privacy Commissioner to have increased power to enforce regulations, and platforms to be held responsible for the content they choose to allow and the reasons for that.
Thank you.