Mobile technology could alter the course of the 2016 U.S. election. Four years ago, writes Dylan Byers in Politico, just 35% of Americans owned smartphones. Today, that figure is 68%, and the increase could have significant political implications, according to several strategists and observers.
Byers quotes Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief at BuzzFeed, as saying, “People will organize and persuade on mobile devices and apps, the same way they live on them more broadly.”
Smartphones, Byers writes, will increase the number of citizen reporters, making it unlikely that any gaffe or injudiciously blunt comment will go unrecorded. Byers quotes Henry Blodget, editor and CEO of business insider, as saying, “Gaffes will blow up even faster. Partisan rooting will be even quicker and more intense.”
Mobile devices will also provide campaigns with the opportunity to provide nano-targeted advertising. Perhaps most invasive of privacy, on Election Day, campaigns will be able to use your geolocation data to tell whether you’ve gone to the polls and—if not—use nano-targeted communications to urge you to vote.
You can read the complete article here.
