Electioncast: The UK Undercover Voters
Newscast
BBC
4.3 • 6.6K Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2024
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | Please welcome social media and disinformation correspondent Mariana Spring. |
| 0:08.6 | Hello. |
| 0:09.6 | I got that around the wrong way, didn't I? |
| 0:11.7 | So I think you got the right. No, which way So I think you could do the right. |
| 0:13.0 | No, which way? |
| 0:14.0 | I can't remember what I said. |
| 0:15.0 | Anyway, both are right. |
| 0:16.0 | But the exciting thing is we're going to be joined by 24 other guests, aren't we? |
| 0:19.0 | We are. |
| 0:20.0 | 24 other guests in my bag and they are fictional guests perhaps sadly or maybe that's |
| 0:26.7 | nicer than the real guests you get them on joking they are the undercover |
| 0:32.0 | voters so the UK undercover voters that I am running this general election. |
| 0:37.2 | 24 fictional characters based on data from an analysis by the National Center for Social Research and they live in eight |
| 0:45.8 | different constituencies around the UK so three in each and they have social media profiles |
| 0:50.1 | across all of the main sites so that is Instagram X YouTube Facebook and |
| 0:56.3 | Tik-Tock all of those social media companies have rules guidelines about what you can |
| 1:00.8 | post on their sites what shared and on, and some of them have |
| 1:04.3 | introduced new resources or additional resources to deal with this general election period. |
| 1:09.9 | So they have rules about hate, disinformation, political advertising and targeting, |
| 1:14.6 | also their algorithms and what they recommend different users. And it's worth saying that |
| 1:18.6 | these 24 characters are a whole range of different people. So they are different ages, |
... |
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