Cambridge Analytica's Role in the 2016 American Presidential Elections and the UK Brexit

Referendum
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Table of Content

1. Introduction 2

2. The Scandal involving Cambridge Analytica Scandal and Pertinent issues 3

3. Consulting Services Cambridge Analytica provided to Donald Trump 7

3.1. The relation between organizations that are data-driven and license-operate

4. Problems Facebook is faced with 9

5. Conclusion 11
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1. Introduction

This report examines Cambridge Analytica's role in the presidential elections of 2016

conducted in the United States. It also briefly touches on whether Cambridge Analytica (CA)

interfered with the Brexit referendum conducted in the UK to determine if the country will

remain in the European Union or not.

It is no longer news that the internet and various social platforms are optimal methods of

obtaining all sorts of data nowadays (Keith and Tay, 2017; Gosling and Mason, 2015). This

places a greater significance on data protection, confidentiality of users' information, and consent

of users (Rothstein, 2015). One such regulation, the European General Data Protection

Regulation (GDPR) was enacted, as an update to previous laws in the wake of the Cambridge

Analytica scandal (GDPR, 2016; Lewis et al., 2018).

The Cambridge Analytica scandal involved the harvesting of data from an estimated 87

million Facebook users without prior consent. It started with the development of an application

developed by a Cambridge University psychologist, Alexander Kogan. He had permission from

Facebook to conduct a paid survey involving 320,000 Facebook users. He, however, also

harvested the data of the friends and family of the users without their consent or knowledge.

Consenting to data of friends and family of users because of data anonymization and aggregation

is an unusual act, concerning ethics of research and terms of social media. Facebook was also

complicit in the sense that they failed to notify users or regulators of this breach by Kogan, who

passed on this data to CA for use in the American election campaign of Donald Trump.
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Furthermore, it was alleged that the Brexit referendum was tampered with by CA, with

investigations later absolving it from that charge (Izabella, 2020 and BBC, 2020).

Given this brief background, the Cambridge Analytica scandal will be discussed,

highlighting the actions they took during the campaigns for the 2016 Presidential elections, as

well as issues Facebook has had to deal with in the wake of the scandal.

The structure of the report is in five parts. The first is the introduction to the report, the second

examines the CA scandal, the issues around it, and what the management of CA ought to have

done. The third part examines the services CA provided to the then-Republican candidate Donald

Trump, as well as the student's opinion on the scandal, as well as the relationship between license

to operate and data-driven organizations. The fourth delves into issues Facebook was faced with

in the wake of the scandal, while the fifth is the report's conclusion. The development of this

report was done using credible sources such as the BBC, and other relevant literary works.

2. The CA Scandal, and other relevant issues

The Cambridge Analytica scandal originated from the development of an application

"thisisyourdigitallife" by a University of Cambridge professor of psychology, Aleksandr Kogan

in 2013. The downloading of the application triggers the collection of personal information and

activities (contents liked). 3000,000 Facebook users were said to have downloaded the

application. The data collection nonetheless extended beyond those of the users, but to their

families and friends, due to the "allow" in the privacy settings. This led to data of an estimated

87 million users of Facebook being harvested (Kang and Sheera, 2018).

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In contravention of the agreement with Facebook, which only allowed the harvested data for

educational and research purposes, the data was passed on to the owners of Cambridge Analytica

(a political consulting firm) — Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) who employ data to

determine voters' behavioral and personality traits (Rosenberg et al., 2018). Subsequently, the

data was used in online ads and messages to target prospective voters. This transfer by Kogan to

CA was in breach of the terms of service of Facebook, which prohibits the transfer or sale of data

to data brokers in the form of monetized services (Granville, 2018).

This incident or unethical conduct was unearthed by a Guardian journalist, Henry Davies

(Davies, 2015). He discovered Kogan the Cambridge psychologist had only permission to

harvest the data of users who downloaded the application as a paid survey, he had no permission

to harvest those of their family and friends. Additionally, as mentioned earlier in this report, the

use of the data was for purely academic reasons and thus wasn't to be sold on to a third party

who used them for campaigns in the American elections.

The unethical conduct didn't however stop there as CA's CEO Alexander Nix and his

organization also reached out to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange who was in jail at the time to

obtain the private emails of Hilary Clinton, the main challenger to Donald Trump in the

elections. The executives of CA were also caught on video outlining the illegal activities they

had taken to meet the objectives of their clients. Such illegal activities include extortion, bribery,

and blackmail (Lapowsky, 2018). This was a continuation of the display of social irresponsibility

and unethical conduct by the consultants.

The organization ought to have done proper findings on permissions related to the use and

transfer of the data in question. Keary (2019) noted the need for CA to determine the legality of
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the data they were getting, irrespective of the absence of collective data mining standards (Keary,

2019).

The company also had other options they could have explored such as seeking for data that had

the consent of users, or to undertake a paid survey to obtain the data it required. No matter the

option they could have chosen, the important aspect is the need for explicit consent of users in

primary research and even in certain secondary research.

There is a possibility of exemption in the scenario where obtaining consent has proven to be

disproportionately difficult (Hhs, 2009). This was not the case with the CA scandal. They ought

to give the ability to either decline or be part of the survey to users in clear and explicit terms.

The company damaged its reputation in the process as a result of the long list of unethical

activities, which might have been avoided (Keary, 2019).

The unethical activities open up organizations to penalties, sanctions, loss of income, lawsuits,

and demise as happened in this particular case. CA was also accused of interference in the

United Kingdom's Brexit Referendum, alleging that they tried to engineer support for the groups

in support of leaving the EU. Investigation by the information commissioner however revealed

no evidence of CA aiding any Russian intervention in the referendum (Weaver, 2018; BBC,

2020).

CA employed strategies such as behavioral and micro-targeting to target potential swing voters

in the American Presidential election of 2016, which are perfectly legal, notwithstanding the data

source.
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After the occurrence of such a scandal as the Cambridge Analytica case, certain steps are

required to minimize the damage taken by the concerned organization. Certain steps that

Cambridge Analytica ought to have taken before include:

1. Learning from Past incidents - Firms can learn the way to deal with such scandals by

examining past scandals. This will enable them to enhance resilience by understanding

the vulnerabilities of past incidents. It will enable them to find out the causes of

incidence, the responses, and the extent of effectiveness (Horjus, 2021).

2. Deploying Strategic teams - this is vital to providing a quick response to the incident.

They include the public relations team that will provide responses to inquiries, social and

brand teams that will monitor reputation via online channels, and communication teams

that will ensure communication is maintained with employees, and other relevant

stakeholders (Horjus, 2021).

3. Training and Practice - Preparation for a crisis in a firm can be undertaken using practices

and drills, so when a crisis occurs it becomes easy to respond. It is also imperative that

firms assign roles to the response team's members (Horjus, 2021).

Though the aforementioned may not entirely prevent a crisis, it can ensure a firm starts at

minus 3 instead of minus 10 and provide a better response to the incident.

Additionally, in the scandal's aftermath, communication is the key to minimizing the damage.

Damage control has to be embarked on to minimize damage and restore stakeholders' confidence

(Lee, 2020).

Perhaps, taking some of these measures may not have completely saved CA from the damage

that led to its demise, but it certainly would have been the right approach to take to minimize the

damage and repercussions.

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The following section delves into the kind of services CA rendered to the campaign of Donald

Trump during the 2016 Presidential Elections and the link between data-driven firms and license

to operate.

3. Services Rendered by CA to the Campaign of Donald Trump.

Political consultancy services were rendered by CA to the Donald Trump campaign

organization through an assessment of possible Trump voters. They employed surveys which

they use to determine the personalities of voters. Traits in people's personalities such as being an

introvert or an extrovert were evaluated. They achieved this by posing various questions to the

survey participants. The outcomes of such surveys were then combined with other information

that they had sourced. The firm then develops voting models from this combined information.

Additionally, the traits of potential voters were also assessed using information previously

obtained from Facebook, through Kogan. In the case of the data from Facebook, psychological

profiles are developed through the activities of users on the platform (Rosenberg et al., 2018).

The outcome was then used to derive customized messages that are sent out to potential voters in

a micro-targeting approach (Lewis and Hilder, 2018). The evaluation of potential Trump voters

was achieved through ad categorization (Isaak, 2018). The way CA implemented this was to

send messages to Trump voters with images of famous people supporting Trump, or messages to

undecided voters with negative Hillary Clinton images (Lewis and Hilder, 2018). The negative

Hilary Clinton messages often sent to undecided voters portrayed the candidate from the

democratic party as a corrupt and indecent politician.

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Allies of Trump such as the super PAC and other prominent republican candidates also

employed the services of Cambridge Analytica.

In my opinion, I find the appointment of CA by Donald Trump to be justifiable and

ethical, given the fact that every aspect of life in these modern times is driven by data, including

politics (Kreiss and Howard, 2010). This approach enables the political party and the candidate

to continue to monitor and target undecided voters. This ability was reported as being

responsible for Donald Trump's victory as his campaign targeted 13.5 million swing voters in the

Midwest (Persily, 2017). The unethical and wrong aspect of the entire saga is the unauthorized

use of data, that users didn't consent to, and neither was it supposed to be used for any other

purpose apart from academic reasons.

3.1 The link between license-to-operate and data-driven organizations

Licenced to operate defines a firm's scope of acceptable activities in its operating domain. In

other words, it is the authority given to a business to operate or trade (Nielsen, 2013).

Most modern businesses wish to be considered as being driven by data. Being driven by data

entails having processed, culture and organizational strategy being subjected to data and

analytics. Additionally, analytics is the basis of decision making and this is an acceptable norm

to all in the organization (Nielsen, 2013).

The main reason for the quick spread of data-driven firms across the globe appears to be as a

result of the benefits it bestows on processes in the firm, enhancing their efficiency, and

effectiveness. Any firm that has decided to be data-driven makes data the basis of every

organizational aspect. It provides them with advantages that include ensuring decisions are made
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based on factual information, leading to competitive advantages being generated when data is

properly utilized by the entire organization.

Adopting data will enhance and ensure transparency in the relations between organizations and

markets.

The scandal that enveloped CA should be a lesson to data-driven firms, that a failure to operate

ethically and legally will create a situation where they lose their license to operate or even the

extreme case of the organization's demise.

4. Issues Facebhashave to contend with

A. Extra negative publicity

It was discovered that operatives out of Russia were making an effort to create problems in

Western politics through the exploitation of Facebook's demographic targeting (Gaus, 2018).

This came to light in a report by Congress, after the CA scandal. This was a negative issue the

company couldn't afford at the time, given the bad press from the CA incident (Gaus, 2018). It

was also discovered that bogus accounts were planted on Instagram.

B. Increasing Pressure over Monetization

Following the CA scandal, there was intense pressure on Facebook to increase its product

monetization as the main news feed received reduced engagements. Given that this strategy was

an innovative move by the company, it will be extremely cumbersome to gain back investors'

confidence (Gaus, 2018). One way of addressing this issue may be to add more adverts on

Instagram.

C. Issues with FB's Corporate Governance

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After the CA scandal, several issues have created bad press for FB which has led to the morale of

employees plummeting, as well as declining brand reputation. This situation has been blamed on

the company's management (Gaus, 2018). This has led to calls from some quarters that the power

of the Chairman/CEO be whittled down by separating the two and having different people old

each.

D. Reduced Confidence in Tech companies

A study revealed that users on social platforms are beginning to show a reduced appetite to use

social media platforms (Gaus, 2018). This was attributed to the interest of people in social

platforms reducing, thus leading to less time spent by users. Facebook and other social platforms

should find the outcome of this study worrying.

Similarly, another study discovered a link between Facebook's peak profit period and the

declining users' health (Gaus, 2018). These studies should be a source of concern for FB as the

company's core business will be impacted by such a decline in the interest of users.

In summary, the CA scandal created significant bad press for Facebook, which led to

heavy scrutiny of the company's data policies and access to third parties. It must put stricter

policies in place and increase its monitoring of applications on its platform. The company needs

to overhaul its CSR practices, as the CA scandal revealed several efficiencies.

Countries are moving to improve Data laws and make them more comprehensive and up-to-date

as a result of the CA scandal (an example is the GDPR in Europe). Data-driven entities must

ensure they are conversant with such laws so they don't contravene them and potentially lose

their license to operate.

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5. Conclusion

In conclusion, this report discussed the political conducting firm — Cambridge

Analytica's role in the 2016 Presidential elections in the United States, as well as its alleged

interference in the Brexit referendum in the UK.

The Donald Trump Campaign organization appointed the British Political consulting firm

Cambridge Analytica to profit it with analytical services during the election campaign period.

The firm employed techniques such as micro and behavioral targeting to identify potential swing

voters to get its client Donald Trump elected.

The problem wasn't the appointment of the CA, but the decision of CA to use data obtained

without the consent of users from the Facebook platform for the analytical services. Instead of

data from 300,000 survey participants meant to be used for academic purposes, CA received data

from almost 87 million Facebook users without consent from a psychologist at Cambridge

University, Aleksandr Kogan.

Cambridge analytica eventually met its demise after it was exposed that it had not engaged in

unethical use of unauthorized data, it other underhanded tactics such as bribery, blackmail, and

extortion.

The firm demonstrated a lack of ethics and corporate social responsibility. The report also

examined the services CA rendered to Donald Trump, the relationship between license-to-

operate and data-driven companies, and the problems Facebook has had to face after the CA

scandal. The problems ranged from additional negative press to the reduction in the interest of

users on social platforms, to pressure for increased motivation, and issues with governance in the

company.
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The report demonstrates the significance of conducting business ethically and being a socially

responsible organization, as well as the need for data-driven firms to respect data laws, or run the

risk of losing their license to operate.

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