Research Monitor Microtargeting
The iRights.Lab think tank produces a regular Research Monitor on behalf of the State Media Authority of North Rhine-Westphalia.
German and European researchers have thus far dealt only tentatively with the topic of microtargeting in election campaigns. Most of the research projects and scientific papers on the subject are from the USA. Since Barack Obama’s election campaign in 2008 at the latest, it has become clear that both Democrats and Republicans in the US are employing massively data-driven processes in their election campaigns. In the paper State of Research: Microtargeting in Germany and Europe, we summarize the current expert debate on microtargeting in political communication, point to gaps in the research and provide suggestions on where new work is needed.
The paper was commissioned by the Landesanstalt für Medien NRW. The publication can be downloaded (German) free of charge from the Media Authority’s website and from our own.