Earlier, media outlets published extensive reports with leaked emails and undercover footage of the practices Cambridge Analytica and its partners used during the presidential campaign in Nigeria in 2015. The reports exposed the company's "dark arts of political persuasion" aimed at discrediting Muhammadu Buhari and getting then-President Goodluck Jonathan re-elected. Among other things, it included hacking techniques to access social media accounts and gain insight information to use it against a political opponent.
As the world is now witnessing a new wave of accusations against the notorious company, and previously unknown details are revealed, Sputnik decided to shed light on the background information of Cambridge Analytica, how it was founded, its functions and activities, how it operated through the years and what exactly it was accused of.
What is Cambridge Analytica?
Cambridge Analytica was a private company that offered its services to businesses and political parties seeking to influence audience behavior. It used data mining technologies from various sources, including social media platforms and its own surveys, to develop strategic communications for online PR campaigns. It analyzed huge amounts of consumer data and applied to it behavioral science to identify those individuals who can be targeted with marketing material.
With its headquarters in London, the firm emerged in 2013 as an offshoot of another British company called SCL Group (formerly Strategic Communication Laboratories), which offered similar services around the world. The firm's original remit was to participate in US political campaigns.
As it was a part of SCL Group, it shared some of its directors. The main player was Alexander Nix, chief executive of both SCL and Cambridge Analytica UK. After studying at Manchester University and working in corporate finance, Nix joined the group in 2003 and subsequently developed the political arm of the business.
Cambridge Analytica’s founder later explained that it had been created "to fill the vacuum in the US Republican political market."
"The Democrats had ostensibly been leading the tech revolution, and data analytics and digital engagement were areas where Republicans had failed to catch up. We saw this as an opportunity," Nix is cited by the media as saying.
The company was partly owned by entrepreneur Robert Mercer, who is also known as a key Donald Trump supporter and political donor. According to earlier reports, he gave $15Mln in funding to Cambridge Analytica. He was introduced to the firm by Steve Bannon, who was its vice-president and board member from 2014 to 2016.
Methods: How Data was Collected & Used
Cambridge Analytica was engaged in collecting data about Internet and social network users, compiling their psychological portraits and developing personalized advertising. The algorithms that were behind the technologies used by the firm were largely developed by Michal Kosinski, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Kosinski with his colleagues developed a profiling system using general online data, Facebook likes and smartphone data. The model helped to better recognize the personality of an individual by analyzing a limited number of "likes," making it possible to create a psychological portrait and therefore reveal all the character traits of the person being studied.
It demonstrated that individual psychological targeting is a powerful tool to influence people. It implies the practice of extracting people's psychological profiles from their digital footprints. A large amount of data can be obtained from the record of the trace of everyone's step online - from Facebook profile to Google searches, reflecting people's habits and preferences. Then, the collected data can be used to form their attitudes, emotions or behaviors through psychologically customized interventions at scale.
According to the media outlets, Cambridge Analytica collected data on voters using sources such as demographics, consumer behaviour, Internet activity, and other public and even private sources, as well as specially designed mobile apps and polling. In particular, it used data derived from millions of Facebook users, reportedly without their knowledge or permissions.
Meddling in Election Campaigns
At its early days, Cambridge Analytica mainly targeted Facebook and other social networks to run advertisements, including ads for political campaigns, based on users' profile information. While its parent company focused on influencing elections in various developing countries around the world since the 1990s, Cambridge Analytica largely operated in western countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States.
According to its CEO Alexander Nix, since its foundation the company has been involved in at least 44 US political races of different levels of significance. However, it became known only in 2016 in connection with the election campaign of Ted Cruz, then the US presidential candidate from the Republican Party. Its promotional technology, based on data analysis, reportedly helped him at first to compete on equal terms with other candidates. After Ted Cruz dropped out of the Republican presidential race in May 2016, Robert Mercer, a company's sponsor, became a supporter of Donald Trump. It was assumed by the media pundits that the consulting firm using its practices boosted donations and contributed to Trump’s victory.
The media reported that Cambridge Analytica analyzed millions of data points to find the most persuadable voters and the topics they were interested in and then sent messages with initial goal of influencing their perceptions and therefore decisions on elections. Voters from different states across the country were polled every day, while online advertising and social media sent them customized messages.
In 2016, apart from its purported involvement in Donald Trump's presidential campaign, the company also reportedly worked for Leave.EU, one of the organizations that campaigned in the UK's referendum on European Union membership. However, this has been hotly disputed and rejected by the co-founder of Leave.EU, Arron Banks.
Later, Cambridge Analytica was subjected to severe criticism and faced accusations for using during 2016 campaigns the data from profiles to which it couldn't have access and which wasn't freely available. Its role in the campaigns is still controversial and under ongoing inquiry in both countries. At the same time, political analysts have repeatedly questioned the effectiveness of the company's methods of targeting voters.
Facebook–Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal
The fact that information about millions of Facebook users was obtained by Cambridge Analytica without their knowledge shocked the general public in 2018. The company was accused of using personal data of 50 million Facebook users to predominantly apply in political advertising and thus influence the outcomes of the 2016 US presidential election.
The company was able to collect personal data of Facebook users via a "This is Your Digital Life" app, developed by data scientist Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research in 2013. The app included several tests aimed at building psychological profiles of users and collecting the personal data of their friends. This allowed the company to manipulate data in its favor, and the extent of this manipulation has yet to be established by an international investigation.
The details of alleged misuse of data by the company was exposed by media in 2018. Christopher Wylie, a former Cambridge Analytica employee, provided revealing documents and first-person testimony to the media. Moreover, he stated that certain amount of the data remained on its servers.
Apart from that, the British outlet published an alleged recording of conversations with the company's managers, from which it could be concluded that its employees paid bribes to discredit political figures.
In response, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg admitted before the US Congress that his social network made mistakes by working with Cambridge Analytica. He vowed to introduce measures to make it harder for other companies and apps to collect Facebook user data. In 2019, it was announced that Facebook was fined $5 billion by the US Federal Trade Commission for privacy violations. The network also agreed to pay a £500,000 (around $600,000) fine to the UK Information Commissioner's Office for exposing the data of its users.
As for the company, it declared bankruptcy in 2018 following legal and political consequences from its scandal with Facebook for using personal data obtained from millions of users. The scandal had an enormous aftermath as it sparked an increased public interest in privacy and social media's influence on politics.
Operations Around the World
In March 2018, the British broadcaster released an investigative film that provided evidence that Cambridge Analytica was involved in more than 200 elections around the world. According to the broadcaster, the company used data science methodologies to support political campaigns, namely in Kenya both in 2013 and in 2017.
To expose its business practices, a journalist from the channel pretended to be a client allegedly seeking to influence the outcome of the elections in Sri Lanka, and held a number of meetings with Cambridge Analytica employees between November 2017 and January 2018 in hotels in London. During one of the conversations, the head of the firm, Alexander Nix, admitted that his organization interfered in hundreds of elections in various parts of the world, including such countries as Argentina, Nigeria, India and the Czech Republic.
*Meta/Facebook is banned in Russia as an extremist organization.