Partnership Opportunities with Tactical Tech’s Data & Politics Team 'Inside the Influence Industry'
Tactical Tech is looking to partner with like-minded organisations to outreach, translate, contextualise and co-create existing and new content around our research on digital political campaign techniques, particularly the report 'Personal Data: Political Persuasion. Inside the Influence Industry. How it works'.
The report is a collection of research pieces, each of which highlights a specific digital political campaigning method that uses voters’ personal data. Each chapter features a description of the method, technique or tool as well as examples from around the world of how it was used in a recent election.
The collection of research chapters is based on original desk research by Tactical Tech’s Data & Politics team and informed by the research findings conducted by our international partners.
Partnership Goals and Overview
We are looking to partner with organisations in one or more of the following ways:
Outreach Partners - spread Tactical Tech’s work on how personal data is used for election influence by distributing and sharing it with your networks and communities.
Translation Partners - help information from the report "Personal Data: Political Persuasion" reach a wider audience by translating the new content for your audience.
Contextualisation Partners - show how these technologies are relevant to your context by collecting evidence documenting how different tools have been used in your local, regional or national elections.
Co-Creation Partners - defend against digital election interference by co-developing election monitoring tactics for upcoming or future elections together with Tactical Tech and potential technical experts.
Outreach Partnerships
Much of the conversation on digital election influence focuses on Facebook and fake news, but Tactical Tech’s report details how frequently overlooked factors like data breaches, geolocation information, smart TVs, campaign apps and chat bots are part of the digital election influence ecosystem. To help raise awareness of the different mechanisms through which personal data is used to influence elections around the world, outreach partners will distribute Tactical Tech’s original research to their local communities and target audiences and/or embed elements of Tactical Tech’s work into their existing outreach materials and strategies. Outreach partners should be trusted sources in their respective communities with a strong reputation and reach. Potential partners are free to suggest outreach ideas (e.g., presentation at a conference, screening at an exhibition, distribution of material with other partners, talk with local community, etc.).
Key Data & Politics resources for outreach include:
Personal Data: Political Persuasion. Inside the Influence Industry. How it works.
Visual gallery: Inside the Influence Industry. What’s for sale? and the associated trailer.
Content from the project's website .
Translation Partnerships
In order to make its research more accessible globally, Tactical Tech is looking to partner with organisations from around the world to both translate and outreach Data & Politics’ existing content. In consultation with the Data & Politics team, partners will identify relevant resources (see list below) to translate that are most applicable to their local political context and of most interest to their local audience. The number of resources to translate is dependent on the partner’s capacity and available time. Along with the translation, partners commit to circulating the new translations via their organisation’s outreach channels and networks.
Key Data & Politics resources for translation include:
Chapters from Personal Data: Political Persuasion. Inside the Influence Industry. How it works:
Consumer Data: The fuel of digital campaigns Voter Files: Political data about you Breaches, Leaks and Hacks: The vulnerable life of voter data
A/B Testing: Experiments in campaign messaging Campaign Apps: Tap to participate Third-party Tracking: Cookies, beacons, fingerprints and more Digital Listening: Insights from social media
Geotargeting: The political value of your whereabouts Search Result Influence: Reaching voters seeking answers Addressable TV: Who’s watching what you’re watching? Robocalls and Mobile Texting: Automated campaign outreach WhatsApp: The Widespread Use of WhatsApp in Political Campaigning in the Global South Psychometric Profiling: Persuasion by personality Upcoming Technologies: The next frontier in campaign technology
Visual gallery: Inside the Influence Industry. What’s for sale? and the associated trailer.
Content from the project's website .
Contextualisation Partnerships
Contextualisation Partners effectively author their own version of the "Personal Data: Political Persuasion" report with support from Tactical Tech, focusing on their respective geographies or political issues. By doing so, they illustrate the extent to which the technologies outlined in the report’s chapters affect their local, regional or national political processes through contextualisation and documentation. One contextualisation partner, for example, might find evidence of five major methodologies in their home country, while another might find evidence of the technologies described in every chapter. Note that all formal political processes are eligible for analysis here, allowing partners to document the application of these technologies in elections and political issue campaigns (e.g., referendums, recalls, inner-party campaigning).
Co-Creation Partnerships
Co-Creation Partnerships are the most involved and resource-intensive of the four possible partnerships. For this reason, preference will be given to strong localisation partners and to partners in compelling circumstances (for example, those in places with an upcoming election in which a technology that uses personal data is in widespread use). Co-Creation Partnerships will be comprised of partners, Tactical Tech’s Data & Politics team, and depending on the technology at hand, a technical specialist. Some examples might include:
A local group could partner with Tactical Tech’s Data & Politics team and a mobile app security engineer to explore how a popular presidential candidate’s app is collecting and using the personal data of its users (relating to chapter 6 of the report).
A partner might work with the Data & Politics team and a digital marketing expert to study political ads on search engines (chapter 10).
An environmental rights group could work with Tactical Tech and a web developer to track a government agency or candidate’s experiments with slogans regarding climate change and public transportation services (chapter 5).
These partnerships aim to investigate important questions and collaboratively develop strategies for election monitoring as part of a larger effort to help local groups across the world examine and monitor digital interference in their own elections.
Who?
We are looking to partner with organisations on one or more of the four different types of partnerships outlined above. We would like to work with organisations who research and/or advocate on the topics of data protection, digital rights and/or elections and democracy in the digital age. Ideally, organisations will come with a strong existing public and professional network which can be accessed to outreach the results of the partnership. The work undertaken as part of the partnership agreement preferably fits within a partner organisation’s existing strategy or project remit.
Priority will be given to local partners active in Africa, Latin America, Asia, the Pacific Islands and select countries from Eastern Europe.
There is a limited amount of funding available and will be negotiated as part of the partnership agreement.
How?
If you are interested in applying, please send a copy of the relevant completed questionnaire/s below to partnership@tacticaltech.org with the subject line ‘Data and Politics Partnership Application’. The call for partnerships will be done in rounds. Interested applicants are encouraged to apply on a rolling basis. The next round will be announced in early 2020.
Outreach Partners
- Name and contact details
- Organisation name
- Country
- Please give a short description of your organisation.
- How do you plan to outreach Tactical Tech’s Data & Politics work on this topic? Whom will you be reaching?
- How do you plan to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of your outreach?
- What is your proposed timeline for outreach?
Translation Partners
- Name and contact details
- Organisation name
- Country
- Please give a short description of your organisation.
- What chapters of the report are you most interested in translating?
- What language will you translate the content into?
- What is your proposed time frame for translation?
Contextualisation Partners
- Name and contact details
- Organisation name
- Country
- Please give a short description of your organisation.
- Because contextualising Tactical Tech’s report, ‘Personal Data: Political Persuasion. Inside the Influence Industry. How it works’ can be a considerable undertaking, explain how being a contextualisation partnership aligns with your organisation's existing strategic direction.
- Describe why your organisation would make a strong contextualisation partner.
- Are you interested in contextualising the content geographically (e.g., demonstrating and documenting evidence that these technologies are used in a particular country or region) or topically (e.g, doing the same for a particular issue or cause)?
- What initial reasons do you have to believe that the technologies described in the report are applicable to your region or cause of interest? Note that our research focus is on how personal data has become a political asset, not on digital misinformation, disinformation, or fake news in elections.
Co-Creation Partners
- Name and contact details
- Organisation name
- Country
- Please give a short description of your organisation.
- What technology are you interested in researching or exploring in depth? Why do you believe this particular application of technology warrants deeper investigation?
- What chapter of the report does this technology relate to (if any)?
- What areas of expertise would be required to investigate this technology, and what external support might you need?
- Is there a timeline to be aware of before investigating this technology (e.g., an upcoming election)?
Further Information
For any questions or more information please contact the Data & Politics team at partnership@tacticaltech.org using the subject line ‘Data and Politics Partnership Application’.
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