Authors

Laura-Diana Matei¹;  ¹ Independent Researcher, UK

Discussion

The present sociological context shows that the ideological political battle, started by Cambridge Analytica scandal case, has become more subtle and effective today than in the past. Due to AI digital marketing technology, massively disseminated on social networks, public speeches and ordinary political debates are now doubled by discreet, personalised interactions that penetrate the intimate personal space of each individual, exploiting their emotions, prejudices and psychological vulnerabilities. It has also been discovered that AI generative programs are able of instantly producing dozens or hundreds of personalised variants of the same political message, starting from an initial generic pattern. Therefore, after the prior identification by AI algorithms of the “digital profile” of each person, digital language programs deliver, on (political) demand, in a structured way, personalised political marketing messages, that are capable of modifying the personal perceptions from within. Thus, we can already speak of a growing tendency of a new digital politics, where ethics, discernment and democracy are worryingly questioned and threatened. Generally, digital political manipulation is achieved through differentiation, decentralisation and personalisation by means of an effective micro-targeting in which each individual is delivered the political message that resonates best with them. Therefore, digital manipulation techniques are initially based on adapting to the psychological profile of different categories of consumers to whom they subsequently deliver ideological and political content to which algorithms have previously shown that these consumers are sensitive and respondent. Digital technology merges with psychology, a way of mass manipulation being created by personalised targeting, using the stimulus-response method. Such manipulation becomes very difficult to detect, track and control, emerging as a real threat to democratic integrity itself. The old rules of the political game, once better defined and clear, nowadays tend to volatilise on this invisible field of digital technology. Political propaganda, doubled by micro-targeting and often by disinformation, tends to become a part of a more complex process of destabilisation, antagonism being the basis of ideological conflicts and of separation of individuals in a society. Thus, on the vulnerable field of destabilisation, ideological and political manipulation become much easier to achieve, and disinformation is not only a mystification of reality, but a strategy of shaping and creating the reality itself. Digital technology, as a political weapon, makes possible the transformation of virtual manipulative narratives into concrete realities. Therefore, in the absence of a clear regulatory system and ethical vigilance, this new form of political power, namely digital political marketing, risks to transform democracy into a fragile process, subject to a continuous manipulation.