000			04957nam a22002417a 4500
999			_c22731 _d22734
003			ES-MaBCA
005			20200120093926.0
008			150225b xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020			_a978-92-846-3614-3
024			_2doi _a10.2861/03717
040			_aES-MaBCA _cES-MaBCA
245			_aPolarisation and the use of technology in political campaigns and communication
260			_cMarch 2019
300			_a60 p. _fRecurso online
490			_aBRIEFING _vPE 634.414
520			_aPopulist and extreme voices that once existed at the margins of European party systems have now become mainstream. From the rise of Italy's Five Star Movement to the electoral successes of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany and Poland's Law and Justice Party (PiS), the populist wave that has swept over Europe in the last decade has baffled many political analysts and observers. Whilst initially understood as a reflection of the economic anxieties brought about by the 2008 financial crisis, it has become apparent that the recent surge of anti-establishment parties was strengthened by growing fears of cultural liberalisation, mass immigration and the perceived abandonment of national sovereignty to the diktats of globalised elites. As public discourse coarsens and tensions rise, there is a growing sense that European society is more polarised than ever before. Against this backdrop, new digital technologies have taken centre stage in political processes – both as a source of information and a campaigning platform. In critical moments of public life, citizens of Europe increasingly consult social media for news about politics and public affairs. Such new and relatively unregulated platforms create new opportunities for nefarious actors to deliberately push false content and distort information flows for political gain. While the political, social and ideological forces that drive citizens apart are varied and complex, in recent years, scholars and policy-makers have increasingly pointed to digital technology as one of the potential drivers of polarisation. The following report explores the relationship between these two phenomena in contemporary Europe. It does so by first reviewing two core mechanisms through which social media could be polarising European publics: inadvertently, through design choices and incentives (2.1 Polarisation by design) that potentially narrow the diversity of information accessed by individuals while facilitating the dissemination of divisive and emotionally-charged content; and deliberately (2.2 Polarisation by manipulation), through the exploitation of loopholes in an attention-driven media ecosystem to stoke divisions and manipulate users. We then outline three counter-trends, whereby technology has and could continue to facilitate a better relationship between European publics and civic life, starting with social media as a catalyst and focal point for political activism, mobilisation and organising (4.1). We then touch on the powers of digital nudging, its effects on giving, civic debate and voting practices, paying special attention to how purposeful design and positive social nudging can help create healthier online environments and incentivise political engagement (4.2). Finally, we survey how advances in artificial intelligence, although still in their infancy, offer new opportunities to bring about better accountability and transparency in online information environments (4.3). In the last section of this report, we sketch out how these trends may continue in the future. We note that as individuals increasingly retreat to private spaces to access and discuss political news and information, new challenges will emerge for policy-makers to monitor and remedy the spread of misleading, false or polarising information (5.1). Beyond that, many of today's political manipulation tools are likely to sharpen with time as they benefit from technological advances in artificial intelligence and increasingly embedded communication cultures. This could take the form of increasingly sophisticated conversational interfaces and 'deepfakes' for example – an image synthesis technique already used to create hoaxes and falsehoods involving politicians (5.2). Yet as technology becomes more and more politicised and regulatory efforts are ramped up to address these new threats, we caution against short-sighted legal action, which if taken precipitously, could have chilling effects on democracy itself (5.3).
650		0	_915012 _aInnovaciones tecnológicas
650		0	_916280 _aCampañas electorales
650		0	_916281 _aComunicación en política
710			_912899 _aParlamento Europeo _b. Servicio de Investigación Parlamentario Europeo
856	4		_uhttps://biblioteca.guardiacivil.es/cgi-bin/koha/opac-retrieve-file.pl?id=d00648a3dd11b7a066539de13c4944bd _y *DESCARGAR PDF*
942			_2udc _cINF _kBoletín UE _mMarzo 2019