The Impact of Technology and Social Media on U.S. Elections: A Focus on the 2024 Election
Introduction
The internet and social media have gradually become indispensable factors in political campaigns and electoral processes today. In the United States, this has been increasingly observed and put into practice, especially during presidential contests. The more we approach the 2024 US presidential elections, the clearer it becomes that technology and social media will have ever greater influences on the concrete shaping of the political terrain, voters’ preferences, and maybe even the whole course of the election.
The 2020 U.S. presidential election saw unprecedented levels of digital engagement by candidates and political parties, who leveraged technology in novel ways to reach out and connect with voters. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram played a central role in political discourse, and in many key battleground states, the outcome depended on digital strategies. As the gaze is set toward 2024, the political environment is ripe for even more innovation and disruption. Yet, new challenges are looming-large issues such as misinformation, cybersecurity, and manipulation of public opinion through digital channels.
This article will review how technology and social media influence U.S. elections, especially the race that will take place in 2024. We look at a few of the main ways digital tools and platforms shape political campaigns, voter behavior, and election integrity. We also consider some ethical and regulatory issues associated with using technology in elections, and what such trends bode for democracy.
Technology in Political Campaigns: How It All Began
Technology had, of course, been playing a more salient role in election campaigns since the 1990s, but the full emergence and possibilities of technology in contemporary elections finally materialized when Barack Obama was elected to the U.S. presidency in 2008, where his campaign made extensive use of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. It was during this time that Obama’s digital campaign team took the modules of political campaigns, targeted advertisements, online fundraising, and grassroots organizing to new dimensions via digital channels.
By the time of the 2016 election, technology’s role in political campaigns had expanded even further. The Trump campaign famously used data-driven techniques, microtargeting, and social media engagement as ways to rally support and spread its message. In particular, Facebook became a host platform for political discourse, with millions of ads targeting specific voter demographics according to their data analytics. The story of this election would be wired on the theme of public perception and engagement through the pervasiveness of the use of social media and online platforms.
Technology’s role reached new heights in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic basically forced a move to virtual campaigning. The rallies were replaced by live-streamed events, digital town halls, and social media-driven campaigns. Both major parties heavily leveraged the likes of Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok to engage younger voters, while other generations were targeted with digital ad buys on Facebook and YouTube.
This will be even more so in the 2024 election, where candidates for the most part will be using electronic means to converse with the population, source fundraising, and mold public perception.
Social Media: The Double-Edged Sword
Social media has dramatically changed the way political campaigns are conducted. It offers unparalleled opportunities for candidates to reach directly to voters, bypassing traditional media intermediaries like television and newspapers. In turn, this creates more potentials for authenticity and finesse in communication targeted at specific audiences. Yet, at the same time, social media has also become a breeding ground for misinformation, echo chambers, and even manipulation.
In the 2016 election, it became all about disinformation through social media platforms. Indeed, the interference of Russia through social media platforms, especially on Facebook, was believed to be one of the main factors that caused the election results. Each of fake news stories, divisive political advertisements, and coordinated social media efforts were used in the pursuit of creating division and swaying public opinion. The same issues popped up during the 2020 election, with misinformation moving swiftly along platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. While there were some measures taken, the proliferation of false information was hard to police on social media sites.
These companies are very likely to be again at the center of the public discourse in the 2024 elections, amid growing pressure from governments, civil society, and users for greater responsibility for content carried on their platforms. The fact-checking systems would need to go through now, flag the false claims, and curb the reach of harmful content. But with such efforts put in place, the scourge of misinformation still poses a serious threat to the election process.
Microtargeting: The Power of Data Analytics
Other major ways in which technology is being used to sculpt the 2024 US election process involve microtargeting-big data used to target discrete segments of voters with tailored political messages. This is a practice that has been honed over the last few electoral cycles, and by 2024, campaigns will have access to even more sophisticated data tools.
Because of microtargeting, political campaigns are able to precisely address voters with their messages-to individual tastes, characteristics, and actions online, even emotions. That makes for very personal and powerful kinds of political communication. But there are ethical concerns in the practice: an ability to manipulate voters through precisely targeted ads can be seen as an invasion of personal privacy and autonomy.
In the 2020 election, heavy use of microtargeting was utilized by both major political parties. Companies that specialized in data analytics, like Cambridge Analytica, were contracted to scrape voter data off social media sites for use in crafting extremely targeted messages. Sometimes, this information was used to influence voters in support of or against candidates, parties, and political issues. In this realm, techniques will likely be even more refined in the 2024 election, as campaigns use AI and machine learning algorithms to better predict voter behavior and adjust strategies in real time.
Artificial Intelligence in Campaigns
Artificial intelligence is another technology that may well play an important role in this impending election. AI has many uses-which might range from automation of communication to analyzing a great amount of data for insight into political campaigns.
One area where AI has already been applied is the making of political ads. The algorithms can develop persuasive messages, targeted to specific audiences, and then optimize ad content for maximum impact. In addition, AI could also help campaigns analyze voter sentiment by analyzing social media trends, news articles, and other online content. This enables them to make modifications to their strategies based on real-time feedback from the electorate.
Artificially intelligent chatbots in election campaigns are increasingly in fashion. They can debate topics on social media with voters, answer questions, and disseminate information about the candidates’ platforms. While these bots have the capacity to engage large numbers of voters, they raise a host of other problems related to transparency and further manipulation. All too often, the voter does not even realize that the responses are automated and do not come from human campaign representatives.
Cybersecurity and Election Integrity
The 2024 election will be yet another venue where cybersecurity concerns are broached. The greater use of technology to facilitate voting, campaigning, and communication with the public has increased considerably the concern about possible cyberattacks and interference in the election. State-sponsored hackers, along with freelancers, may attempt to breach the security systems of voting or manipulate election outcomes and further misinformation to confuse voters.
The 2016 election exposed a number of fissures in America’s electoral infrastructure, as Russian-backed hackers sought to exploit the process with hopes of affecting the outcome by breaching state election systems and spreading disinformation online. Since then, U.S. officials have taken numerous steps to shore up cybersecurity safeguards and safeguard election integrity. But the pace at which technology advances produces fresh vulnerabilities by the day, and threats of cyberattacks remain high.
In 2024, the federal and state governments will work to secure the digital infrastructure around elections. Blockchain for secure voting, a better encryption method for digital communication, or even more scrutiny regarding foreign interference-the election process can be safeguarded with all these measures.
Impact on Voter Behavior
Technology and social media too create an impact on voter behavior. As a matter of fact, several research points out that digital campaigning does have the potential to affect not just the way people vote but also their engagement with political issues and even how they turnout to vote. We’re likely to see even more sophisticated efforts to mobilize voters through digital means in 2024.
Social media is one of those platforms in which campaigns are not going to turn their backs because, particularly with younger demographics, online content is more influential. Social media can create those viral moments and make people actually talk about an election to get them to vote or at least discuss issues with their friends and family.
At the same time, there is a lurking fear that these very same social media and digital technologies could, in fact, be breeding voter apathy, polarization, and disillusionment in their wake. This never-ending bombardment of political advertising, online attacks, and divisive content may wear out the voter and disengage him from the processes of elections. More severely, it might even lead to further erosion of confidence in the election system itself.
The Ethics of Digital Campaigning
With technology increasingly being embedded into political campaigns, the ethical issues will be yet another critical area of concern. Questions such as voter privacy, transparency of digital advertising, and the responsibility of technology companies themselves in regulating content are at the very core of debates on how elections should be conducted in the coming years.
For example, microtargeting raises concerns about the manipulation of voters, especially with regard to the use of their personal data without their consent. Additionally, uses of AI in political advertisements and in social media posts run the risk of further muddling any dividing line separating genuine political speech from highly sophisticated forms of persuasion designed to manipulate public opinion.
With the 2024 election, calls will grow for a clamping down on the use of technology in campaigns: more regulation around digital advertising, clearer rules about the usage of personal data, and more accountability by technology companies hosting political content.
