Increasing Digital Campaign Competence

Citizens are frequently exposed to data-driven (political) advertising (DDPA; Kruschinski & Bene, 2022). Parties use individual data, and new technologies in a digital infrastructure, to enable voter segmentation, aggregation, or sophisticated voter targeting (Roemmele & Gibson, 2020) as part of a data-driven campaign. This renders receivers vulnerable to influence, and might therefore weaken democracy as it limits their autonomy because of information asymmetries, power asymmetries, or a lack of voter protection in place. However, a major gap in research on data-driven campaigns exists on understanding how citizens can be empowered in this new political environment. Using political, and persuasion knowledge literature (Boerman et al., 2018; Fowler et al., 2022), we propose the novel concept of “digital campaign competence “ as the combination of conceptual understanding of DDPA, evaluative perceptions towards DDPA, and skills. Digital campaign competence is desirable, because it enables citizens to detect and resist persuasive and potentially manipulative online architectures (Kozyreva et al., 2020). Our research aims to examine the impact of educational interventions on voters' digital campaign competence. Although the effectiveness of educational interventions in enhancing digital campaign competence remains uncertain, our research is informed by insights from the Bad News Game (Roozenbeek & van der Linden, 2019) and active learning strategies in the targeted advertising context (Lorenz-Spreen et al., 2021), which showed that boosting competences improvs individuals' comprehension and detection of fake news, as well as targeted advertising. We ask: RQ1: To what extent does (a) the mode (i.e., playing a game vs. reading a guide) of educational interventions, and (b) the framing (i.e., risk vs. benefit) of educational interventions affect voters’ Digital Campaign Competence? Applying Inoculation Theory (McGuire, 1961), and Framing Theory (e.g. Chong & Druckman, 2007) we explore how active or passive learning, as well as the different presentations of the same issue can create resistance to persuasive messages and impact digital campaign competence when reading a voter guide or playing a campaign game. We propose the following hypotheses: H1: Playing a game about political targeting (vs. reading a voter guide) leads to an increase of Digital Campaign Competence. H2: Exposure to a risk-framed (vs. benefit-framed) educational intervention about political targeting leads to an increase of Digital Campaign Competence. To test our assumptions, we are in the process of conducting a 2 (mode of intervention: reading the voter guide vs. playing a campaign game) x 2 (framing: risks vs. benefits of DDPA) experimental between-subject design, and a control group. The participants will be randomly assigned to the conditions. An online panel professional data collection company will recruit a sample of Austrians. The first factor concerns the mode of intervention: reading a voter guide or playing a game learning common DDPA techniques. The second factor concerns the framing of an educational intervention, highlighting the benefits or risks associated with DDPA for voters, society, and politics. Our study will contribute to understanding the effectiveness of educational interventions in enhancing digital campaign competence, potentially empowering citizens to resist manipulation and influence in data-driven political campaigns.