
(2012) Obama, Facebook and the power of friendship: the 2012 data election - luso_brazilian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-data-machine-facebook-election
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luso_brazilian
Context for the significance of this article

> Barack Obama's re-election team are building a vast digital data operation
> that for the first time combines a unified database on millions of Americans
> with the power of Facebook to target individual voters to a degree never
> achieved before.

> Digital analysts predict this will be the first election cycle in which
> Facebook could become a dominant political force. The social media giant has
> grown exponentially since the last presidential election, rendering it for
> the first time a major campaigning tool that has the potential to transform
> friendship into a political weapon.

> Facebook is also being seen as a source of invaluable data on voters. The
> re-election team, Obama for America, will be inviting its supporters to log
> on to the campaign website via Facebook, thus allowing the campaign to
> access their personal data and add it to the central data store – the
> largest, most detailed and potentially most powerful in the history of
> political campaigns. If 2008 was all about social media, 2012 is destined to
> become the "data election".

