Here's a brief look at how Donald Trump's team used Facebook in the 2016 USA Presidential Election campaign, the role Cambridge Analytica played and how increasingly targeted and subjective 'news' is impacting trust and consumption behaviours.

1. DONALD TRUMP
AND THE TROUBLE
WITH FACEBOOK

2. Introducing psychologist Michal Kosinski, an expert in
psychometrics
While at Cambridge Psychometrics Centre Michal developed a
way to assess Facebook accounts based on the O.C.E.A.N.
psychometric model
He compared results from the MyPersonality app the team
developed with other aspects of users’ Facebook profile
He proved that from 68 Facebook "likes" by a user, it was
possible to predict their skin color (with 95 percent accuracy),
their sexual orientation (88 percent accuracy), and their
affiliation to the Democratic or Republican party (85 percent)
Cambridge University Psychometric Centre

3. 10 Likes = better than your colleagues
70 Likes = better than your friends
150 Likes = better than your parents
300 Likes = better than your partner
On the day that Kosinski published these findings, he received two phone
calls. The threat of a lawsuit and a job offer.
Both from Facebook.

4. MyPersonality
(O.C.E.A.N.)
Like Analysis
Essentially, what Kosinski had invented was sort of a people search engine. He began to add warnings to most of his scientific work. His
approach, he warned, "could pose a threat to an individual's well-being, freedom, or even life." But no one seemed to grasp what he meant.

5. Strategic Communication Laboratory approached Konsinski asking for access to MyPersonality database – but wouldn’t say why "[We are] the premier election management
agency," says the company's website. SCL provides marketing based on psychological modeling. One of its core focuses: Influencing elections. Who exactly owns SCL and its
diverse branches is unclear, thanks to a convoluted corporate structure. And, in 2013, SCL spun off a new company to participate in US elections: Cambridge Analytica.

6. In 2015 Nigel Farage announced that Leave.EU had
commissioned Cambridge Analytica to support its
online Brexit campaign
The words “Cambridge” and “analytics” made people
think of Konsinski and people started asking him
what he had to do with it
After the referendum result he was forced to explain
that he had nothing to do with Cambridge Analytica
Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix would later
become the Trump presidential campaign’s digital
strategy lead
Enter Cambridge Analytica

7. Trump's striking inconsistencies,
his much-criticized fickleness, and
the resulting array of contradictory
messages, suddenly turned out to
be his great asset: a different
message for every voter
"For a highly neurotic and conscientious audience the threat of a burglary—and the insurance policy of a gun." An image on the left shows the hand of an
intruder smashing a window. The right side shows a man and a child standing in a field at sunset, both holding guns, clearly shooting ducks: "Conversely, for
a closed and agreeable audience. People who care about tradition, and habits, and family."

8. Search Serve
The Ages of Internet Discovery
Share
Some think of three stages of internet content discovery – first we shared things, then search engines arrived, then the SE were gamed and we are served
things – there’s a ‘filter bubble’ which limits our freedom to discover. Can an authentic experience of the connected world and the Filter Bubble coexist?

9. The Algorithm Told Me To Do It
Facebook was very influential during the 2016 presidential election campaign http://www.journalism.org/2017/01/18/trump-clinton-voters-divided-in-their-main-source-for-election-news/

10. The Deleterious Effect of Fake News
Media trust has been eroded http://www.journalism.org/2016/12/15/many-americans-believe-fake-news-is-sowing-confusion/

11. There’s still hope
But younger people are suspicious of ‘social news’ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/17/young-people-national-newspapers-for-election-news/

12. In the meantime, Cambridge Analytica have thaken their Brexit and
Trump case studies to populist right wing movements across Europe

13. Steve Bannon, former executive chair of alt-right site Breitbart News and Trump’s senior counselor and chief strategist – and board member of Cambridge Analytica

14. "Obviously, it is not big data analytics that
wins the election…Candidates do.
“We don't know how much his victory was
helped by big data analytics.”
Michal Kosinski

15. WHAT DO
YOU THINK?