Parliamentary committee slams ministers’ inaction on UK’s analogue-age electoral lawThe government needs to move swiftly on modernising Britain’s ‘dangerously outdated’ electoral rules.Posted 30 Jun 2020
Voters are worried about false information online – and political parties need to listen upThe coronavirus pandemic has seen waves of misinformation spread around the globe – and the UK is no exception...Posted 18 Jun 2020
Britain’s campaign laws leave our elections open to fake news and manipulationDecember’s election was the third Westminster election in four years. Each one of those has highlighted a growing crisis facing the UK’s electoral politics. In an article published by The Guardian, Cambridge Analytica whistle-blower Brittany...Posted 29 Jan 2020
Could social media warp the next General Election?Facebook recently triggered a major public debate by changing its rules on posts by political campaigners. Previously these had been open to ‘fact-checking’ by trusted organisations. However, the new decision means the site will not...Posted 29 Oct 2019
Digital political campaigning remains as unregulated as ever – but calls for reform are increasingOver the weekend, Buzzfeed reported that Britain’s Future, an obscure pro-Brexit group, spent almost £350,000 on 2,600 Facebook adverts over the course of five months, micro-targeting tens of thousands of voters to get them to...Posted 12 Mar 2019
Reining in the political ‘Wild West’: Why we need campaign rules for the 21st centuryPolitical party campaigning has shifted dramatically online in recent years. To give just one example: political parties spent around £1.3 million on Facebook adverts during the 2015 general election. This more than doubled two years...Posted 04 Feb 2019
We can’t leave political transparency to the whim of big tech firms: it’s time for a campaign overhaulWhen an election is just around the corner, there are several tell-tale signs: politicians incessantly visiting factories, thousands of signs strapped to lampposts, and tensions mounting at the dinner table. And there are the flyers....Posted 23 Oct 2018
Online campaigning is a wild west – it’s time we knew what parties were up toIf 2015 was the digital election, this one is more specifically the Facebook election. With the big money rolling into the social media giant from parties – Labour and the Conservatives are planning to spend a million pounds...Posted 30 May 2017