DeepSummary
In this episode of Newscast, Mariana Spring, the BBC's Disinformation and Social Media Correspondent, explains her project of creating 24 fictional social media profiles, called 'undercover voters', based on data from the National Centre for Social Research. These profiles represent different types of voters across eight constituencies in the UK, varying in age, background, ethnicity, and political leanings.
The undercover voters will provide insight into the digital worlds of voters leading up to the UK general election, allowing Mariana to investigate the content, including potential disinformation, hate, and polarizing material, that different types of voters are exposed to on social media. The goal is to understand how social media algorithms and content could influence voting behavior.
Mariana and Adam Fleming introduce each of the 24 undercover voters, describing their personalities, interests, and potential voting patterns. The voters are spread across constituencies in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, reflecting the diversity of the UK electorate.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Mariana Spring and the BBC have created 24 fictional 'undercover voter' social media profiles to investigate the influence of social media content and algorithms on voting behavior in the UK general election.
- The undercover voters represent different demographics, backgrounds, and political leanings across eight constituencies in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
- The project aims to reveal the types of content, including potential disinformation and polarizing material, that different voter groups are exposed to on social media platforms.
- By engaging with the undercover voter profiles and feeding the algorithms, Mariana will gain insights into the subjective and personalized social media experiences of different voter types.
- The undercover voter profiles were created based on research and data analysis by the National Centre for Social Research to represent different 'voter types' across the UK.
- The project will provide regular reports and investigations into the undercover voters' social media feeds leading up to the election, exploring the potential impact on voting decisions.
- The goal is to understand how social media algorithms and content could influence voting behavior and shape the outcome of the general election.
- The undercover voter project highlights the diversity of opinions and factors that influence voting decisions in the UK.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “These are not a polling device. Like, they're not a way of us saying, oh, these people think this because they are, are not real, but what they are is this social media investigative tool that allows me to interrogate and get an insight into what's going on.“ by Mariana Spring
- “It's basically the only way, if I'm honest, because we all inhabit these subjective feeds, subjective realities, I guess, on social media, often very much on our own as well, that you pick up your phone, you scroll through stuff, you don't talk to people about every single thing you're seeing necessarily.“ by Mariana Spring
- “They are kind of a representative sample, and they're based on this bespoke research that the National Centre for Social Research, Natsen, have done for us. And what they did was look at the UK, analysed different data, census data, other data, in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland. And it allowed them to create these kind of voter types, these typologies.“ by Mariana Spring
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Episode Information
Newscast
BBC News
6/2/24
Up to 4 July, we’ll be looking at how the election is unfolding on social media feeds up and down the country.
On this episode of Newscast, Disinformation and Social Media Correspondent Marianna Spring joins Adam to explain how.
Using data from the National Centre for Social Research, she’s set up fictional social media profiles for twenty four undercover voters based in eight constituencies around the UK.
They’ll give us an insight into voters' digital worlds up to the election, and Marianna will help us understand how what happens there could change what happens in the ballot box.
Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. It was presented by Adam Fleming. It was made by Chris Gray with Gemma Roper. George Dabby and Cordelia Hemming are the Undercover Voter producers. The technical producer is Mike Regaard. The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The editor is Sam Bonham.