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Notes from America with Kai Wright

The US of Anxiety Wants to Hear from You

Notes from America with Kai Wright

WNYC Studios

News Commentary, Politics, History, News

4.41.5K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2018

⏱️ 4 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A record number of women are running for office this primary season, which means there's a groundswell of energy around targeting female voters with campaign ads. For our next season of the United States of Anxiety, we’re focusing on power and gender, and we’ve partnered with ProPublica to look at how political advertising targets people of different genders differently on Facebook. Unlike broadcast television ads, which are heavily regulated, we have no idea how individual voters are micro-targeted on Facebook. It’s still the Wild West. Nor do we know about potentially unethical or misleading advertising that may be happening. We do know from the Cambridge Analytica scandal that much of the misinformation spread in 2016 targeted people based on their race and gender. And we know that this is an election in which gender is expected to be a decisive factor. What can you do? Download the ProPublica Ad Tracker Extension - You can download the Facebook Political Ad Collector from the Chrome Web Store or the Mozilla Add-ons Store. NOTE: ProPublica is NOT collecting any private information from you. The plugin simply copies the ads you are seeing in your unique feed. You can read more about how ProPublica is protecting your privacy here. See the ads that other people are seeing - take a look through ProPublica’s database of political ads Send us tips - Have you seen any political ads that appear to target you by your gender? Or target you by your race? Have you seen any political ads that appear to celebrate women? Or any ads that seem misogynistic? Take a screenshot and email us at narrative@wnyc.org to tell us what you’re seeing. By doing this, you'll be part of groundbreaking research — remember this is the first election cycle since Facebook changed its policies. And you'll also be helping WNYC and ProPublica bring you reporting and analysis about these campaign ads. To get started, visit propublica.org/facebook.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey everybody. This is

0:05.0

this is Kai and this is the United States of anxiety. We are hard at work on

0:09.0

season three. It is coming in September. We're going to be focused on gender and power in American politics.

0:15.9

Because as you no doubt know by now, 2018 is all about gender,

0:20.9

might even break records with the gender gap in voters.

0:24.4

Both political parties know this, all political players know this at this point, and you are likely

0:29.2

already seeing ads that are targeting you based on your gender as a consequence.

0:35.0

And so I'm going to play you one of those ads.

0:36.8

It doesn't take much set up because it really speaks for itself.

0:40.8

This is not a spoof.

0:41.8

This is an actual ad for a candidate named Dana Nessel.

0:46.0

If the last few weeks has taught us anything, it's that we need more women in positions of power, not less.

0:54.0

So when you're choosing Michigan's next attorney general,

0:57.6

ask yourself this.

0:59.3

Who can you trust most not to show you their penis in a professional setting. Is it the

1:05.4

candidate who doesn't have a penis? I'd say so. It's just the most amazing ad.

1:10.9

It's because you don't you don't like it just comes out of left field.

1:14.3

It's not what you expect her to say. I'm here with our reporter Amanda Ronchik. Hello Amanda

1:19.6

hey there, Kay. And so as part of our lead up to this next season, Amanda, you are looking at

1:25.5

political advertising online and you are going to be asking for help from our

1:30.0

listeners. That's right because we do not know a lot about political advertising on

1:34.3

platforms like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. It is a Wild West out there still.

...

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