History | The Great Hack | Framing Inquired
I can't be absolutely good. I can't be absolutely bad. I'm typically a mix of both. It is naive of you to expect me to be either of it all the time.
Who am I?
I'm a politician.
If you are taking sides of any political party, then you are making a mistake. A fatal mistake.Understand the inherent nature of politics. They are required to be the cause and the solution. It is invariably choosing the best among the worst.
Well, it could be Cambridge Analytica, Brexit, US 2016 election campaign, proliferation of right wing or populism. I do not take sides. Because what we know and don't can never be true. Do not misinterpret me to be an advocate of any ideology. Do read the below, you may appreciate.
I call it 'Framing', which is the process of organizing thoughts, not necessarily factual, convincing enough to persuade anyone about anything. If you examine, you'd realize that everything that has happened, happening and going to, is an integral part of the framing. Then, why do I have to believe nor oppose anything, and why do you have to?, if I have managed to victimize you of framing.
If a politician's job is to manipulate the minds of their voters by either stating or misrepresenting the facts physically, why is it wrong when done digitally? If you are disagreeing, are you implying that politicians don't lie in election campaigns to their advantage, because they are purists? I needed to ask this question after watching the Netflix original documentary "Great Hack" on the "Cambridge Analtyica" scandal.
Internet can never become a private platform. Once information is made available on internet, it is public no matter how secure it is. Exploitation of the data available on internet is inevitable. As far as Cambridge Analytica is concerned, I wouldn't blame them as it is a public relations or a marketing firm. It marketed an idea, which it's client needed to be disseminated. This is what has been happening for years. Now it is done digitally. That's the difference. Anyone can frame anything favorable or unfavorable to anyone. It all depends on how they build the case. Even though, there is a victim and a perpetrator in the reality, they don't exist when it comes to proving. It depends how do we frame the circumstances or facts.
What I infer from the documentary is that Cambridge Analytica is a marketing firm armed with psychographics and big data of it's target segment. All they did was influenced the decision making process of a prospect, in this case voters, which is what a marketer does. Since they were involved with politics they had to be more aggressive and talk about the sociocultural and socioeconomic situations so as to win votes. Did they misrepresent facts? Did they frame the facts? I'm not certain. But this is what happens even in the court of law. A human interprets situations based on the law and identifies the guilt. It could be biased. Data mining was done through papers and physical evidence. Now it is done digitally or through social media. After all, it is information warfare.
Authored by Balaji Thangapandian aka #BT - a spacefarer, who is also curious about film-making, connectivity technologies and military history.
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