Amid overwhelming news — from Mueller indictments to terrorist driver in New York City — the Facebook take on Americans’ polarization in 2016 as part of its appeal to advertisers (including those ads sent From Moscow with Love) is quite striking.
News: Facebook 2016 elections team provided advertisers with a blueprint of a divided America, carving up electorate https://t.co/LJFbm7tzii pic.twitter.com/ehMvCAodMC
— Alex Kantrowitz (@Kantrowitz) October 30, 2017
Looking through Facebook’s political segmentation, considering this blog’s (this blogger’s) foci, something striking:
- No coal — despite Trump’s emphasis on the (non-existent) “War on Coal” — nor other energy (whether gasoline prices, solar, wind, or …) topics
- Nothing green, environment, climate, or … topics.
“Cannabis reform” shows up in four categories (on the left) while “fishing” shows up twice on the right. And …
The 14 segments are, well, odd … yet, Facebook was playing a game for $100s of millions and has to see this segmentation of value.
The absence of energy, environmental, climate, green, and related topics/words might indicate that these were and are meaningless in understanding of American politics. Certainly, some reads and takes on polling would follow this path. And, the failure of American political elites to talk seriously and consistently about climate change (other than denialists pushing their denial, repetitively) during the election didn’t lend weight to climate as important in politics nor did that ‘absence’ help put climate on the top of Americans’ political agendas.
1 response so far ↓
1 Richard Pauli // Oct 31, 2017 at 8:21 pm
Facebook is structured to support a strong optimism bias and pollyannaism that is ill suited to discussing the topic of global warming climate destbiliazation.