Cambridge Analytica exploited ethnic tensions and fragile democracies across the globe

LUKE BARNES at Think Progress

https://thinkprogress.org/cambridge-analytica-is-a-global-problem-737f86641b53/

"SNIP.........

Over the last five years, electoral politics in Kenya have been in a state of upheaval.

The east African country held elections in 2013, between Uhuru Kenyatta of the National Alliance Party and Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic movement. Kenyatta was eventually declared the winner, with 50.07 percent of the vote, after a ruling from the country’s Supreme Court. Kenyatta then beat Odinga again in 2017, but the Supreme Court annulled the voted before the pair agreed to “resolve our differences” in March 2018.

Both of these elections were characterized by three factors: contested results, a hyper-partisan electoral environment often marked by violence, and the Kenyatta campaign’s use of the controversial firm Cambridge Analytica to help win the election.

Cambridge Analytica’s CEO, Alexander Nix, boasted to undercover reporters from Channel 4 that his firm had “rebranded [Kenyatta’s] entire party twice, written their manifesto, done two rounds of 50,000 surveys…Then we’d write all the speeches and we’d stage the whole thing. So just about every element of their campaign.”

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The whole practice of democracy requires that differences are mitigated and people buy into a shared vision.