Abstract
In spite of mounting concerns about the use of microtargeting in politics and attendant regulatory pressure, spending on digital advertising and ad tech has significantly increased over the past decade. In this article, I explore how political ad tech firms pursue continuity for the high stakes business of political microtargeting. Specifically, I present findings from a discourse analysis of the websites of 34 political ad tech firms who have developed microtargeting tools. Applying van Leeuwen’s framework for legitimation in discourse to this analysis, I find that the firms legitimate microtargeting through four key discourses: Rationalization (“Microtargeting is the Right Approach”), mythopoesis (“Microtargeting is How you Win”), moral evaluation (“Microtargeting is the Democratic Thing to Do”), and Authorization (“Everybody’s Doing It”). I argue that these discourses offer insight for understanding and contextualizing ongoing discussions about the future of microtargeting in politics.
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Cotter, K. (2022). Selling Political Data: How Political Ad Tech Firms’ Discourses Legitimate Microtargeting. In: Smits, M. (eds) Information for a Better World: Shaping the Global Future. iConference 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13192. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96957-8_18
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