Ep. 066 - Rally For Reform: Social Media Has Democratised Everything—Besides Democracy | Tristan Hotham

As the UK prepares for another General Election, we spoke to PhD researcher Tristan Hotham, who has spent the last four years collecting over a decade’s worth of data on political parties' use of social advertising. His findings prove that irreversible damage has been done. Now, as Twitter bans all political advertising and Facebook is under immense pressure to do the same, a new problem presents itself: how can challenger parties and smaller political groups be seen and heard? 80% of Trump’s tweets become news headlines. As we know, organic reach is reserved for the posts which create the most intense emotions. In politics, that’s often the most divisive and controversial messages. In this episode of Social Minds, we learn how banning political ads—or allowing them to run amok—has and will continue to upset Western democracy.