Online advertisements are found frequently splashed across news websites. Clicking on these banners or links provides the news site with revenue. But these ads also often use manipulative techniques, researchers say.

91̽»¨ researchers were curious about what types of political ads people saw during the 2020 presidential election. The team looked at more than 1 million ads from almost 750 news sites between September 2020 and January 2021. Of those ads, almost 56,000 had political content.

Political ads used multiple tactics that concerned the researchers, including posing as a poll to collect people’s personal information or having headlines that might affect web surfers’ views of candidates.

The researchers Nov. 3 at the ACM Internet Measurement Conference 2021.

“The election is a time when people are getting a lot of information, and our hope is that they are processing it to make informed decisions toward the democratic process. These ads make up part of the information ecosystem that is reaching people, so problematic ads could be especially dangerous during the election season,” said senior author , 91̽»¨associate professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.

The team wondered if or how ads would take advantage of the political climate to prey on people’s emotions and get people to click.

“We were well positioned to study this phenomenon because of our previous research on misleading information and manipulative techniques in online ads,” said , 91̽»¨professor in the Allen School. “Six weeks leading up to the election, we said, ‘There are going to be interesting ads, and we have the infrastructure to capture them. Let’s go get them. This is a unique and historic opportunity.'”

The researchers created a list of news websites that spanned the political spectrum and then used a to visit each site every day. The crawler scrolled through the sites and took screenshots of each ad before clicking on the ad to collect the URL and the content of the landing page.

The team wanted to make sure to get a broad range of ads, because someone based at the 91̽»¨might see a different set of ads than someone in a different location.

The researchers used natural language processing to classify ads as political or non-political. Then the team went through the political ads manually to further categorize them, such as by party affiliation, who paid for the ad or what types of tactics the ad used.

“We saw these fake poll ads that were harvesting personal information, like email addresses, and trying to prey on people who wanted to be politically involved. These ads would then use that information to send spam, malware or just general email newsletters,” said co-author , 91̽»¨doctoral student in the Allen School. “There were so many fake buttons in these ads, asking people to accept or decline, or vote yes or no. These things are clearly intended to lead you to give up your personal data.”

Ads that appeared to be polls were more likely to be used by conservative-leaning groups, such as conservative news outlets and nonprofit political organizations. These ads were also more likely to be featured on conservative-leaning websites.

The most popular type of political ad was click-bait news articles that often mentioned top politicians in sensationalist headlines, but the articles themselves contained little substantial information. The team observed more than 29,000 of these ads, and the crawlers often encountered the same ad multiple times. Similar to the fake poll ads, these were also more likely to appear on right-leaning sites.

“One example was a headline that said, ‘There’s something fishy in Biden’s speeches,'” said Roesner, who is also the co-director of the . “I worry that these articles are contributing to a set of evidence that people have amassed in their minds. People probably won’t remember later where they saw this information. They probably didn’t even click on it, but it’s still shaping their view of a candidate.”

The researchers were surprised and relieved, however, to find a lack of ads containing explicit misinformation about how and where to vote, or who won the election.

“To their credit, I think the ad platforms are catching some misinformation,” Zeng said. “What’s getting through are ads that are exploiting the gray areas in content and moderation policies, things that seem deceptive but play to the letter of the law.”

The world of online ads is so complicated, the researchers said, that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why or how certain ads appear on specific sites or are viewed by specific viewers.

“Certain ads get shown in certain places because the system decided that those would be the most lucrative ads in those spots,” Roesner said. “It’s not necessarily that someone is sitting there doing this on purpose, but the impact is still the same —  people who are the most vulnerable to certain techniques and certain content are the ones who will see it more.”

To protect computer users from problematic ads, the researchers suggest web surfers should be careful about taking content at face value, especially if it seems sensational. People can also limit how many ads they see by getting an ad blocker.

, a 91̽»¨undergraduate student studying computer science is also a co-author on this paper. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the , and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

For more information, contact badads@cs.washington.edu.

Grant number: CNS-2041894

The changes the 20^th century brought to American presidential politics — party redefinition, the rise of progressives, third-party disruptors and the changing role of the press — “continue to hold true” in the 21^st century, says , 91̽»¨ associate professor of history.

O’Mara is the author of the new book “,” published in August by University of Pennsylvania Press. She discussed her book and the four elections it investigates with 91̽»¨News.

How did this book come about?

Because of the UW! My colleagues asked me to deliver the annual History Lecture Series in autumn 2012, on the eve of the last presidential election. Some of the great people who came to hear my talks inspired me by asking, “When’s the book coming out?” My colleagues and family encouraged me as well. By then I was entranced with these stories and how they fit into the broader tapestry of modern U.S. history. So I got to writing, and here it is.

Why did you choose the elections of 1912, 1932, 1968 and 1992 to focus on?

One choice was personal: I was a staff person on the Clinton-Gore campaign of 1992. But beyond that, it was hard to choose. One way or another, nearly every election is “pivotal.”

I passed up writing about some consequential election years — like 1948, when Strom Thurmond bolted from the Democrats to run as a states’-rights, pro-segregation candidate, or the legendary Kennedy-Nixon showdown of 1960, or the Reagan landslide of 1980. I did this partly because many people are already familiar with these stories. But my purpose also was to make a bigger point about how different election years and historical eras connect to one another.

The four elections also had three important things in common. They happened at a transformational moment of economic and cultural change: from farms to factories; from prosperity to depression; from establishment to counterculture; and from an age of manufacturing into a globalized, high-tech era. Successive waves of new media and technologies also defined each of these elections, from newspapers to radio to television to the cable news “spin cycle.” And, last, they vividly show how the core issues and constituencies of both Democrats and Republicans have changed over the century.

Three of these four races also had some sort of third-party spoiler. Even though they didn’t win, these political mavericks had a decisive effect on who did win on election day.

Speaking of third-party spoilers: You note historian ‘s comment, “Third parties are like bees. They sting, and then they die.” What lessons about third parties are to be learned from these four elections?

They show the durability of the two-party system, made possible by continual shifts and reinventions within the parties themselves. At the start of the 20th century, the Democrats were the party of the South, of small government and states’ rights, and home to some fiery populist attacks against an intellectual elite. The Republicans were the party of the urban Northeast and upper Midwest, home to advocates of government activism and reform, college-educated urbanites and African Americans.

Over the years, constituencies shifted due to demographic and economic change and in response to the issues and interests of third-parties and other insurgents. Both Socialist Eugene Debs and Progressive Teddy Roosevelt ran in 1912 on messages of reform and more robust government action; Woodrow Wilson’s Democratic Party incorporated many of these issues and ideas going forward. George Wallace’s 1968 attacks on “pointy-headed” government bureaucrats became potent talking points for Republicans from Nixon to Reagan and beyond. And Ross Perot’s folksy 1992 crusade raised the ante for both parties to appeal to the growing bloc of independent voters.

You write that the 1912 election showcased a new style of politics where “charisma and celebrity mattered, as Teddy Roosevelt’s journey showed.” What effect did “TR” and his outsized personality have on that and subsequent 20th century elections?

Teddy Roosevelt seized upon and came to embody a disruptive, modern style of campaigning that started to percolate at the end of the 19th century. Political reforms had lessened the power and sway of party insiders. The proverbial “smoke-filled rooms” where deals got done were still around, but now candidates themselves took a central role in presenting their platform to the voters. Personality mattered more. Issues and ideology mattered more. The rise of newspapers as a mass media contributed greatly to this. A candidate needed to be able to drop pithy quotes to reporters and make big speeches on the road that would get written up in local papers that evening.

Teddy Roosevelt excelled at this candidate-centered campaigning like no other before him. By 1912 the Rough Rider, ex-President and global adventurer was the biggest celebrity in America. When he lost the Republican nomination to the then-incumbent William Howard Taft (who himself ran a very old-fashioned “Rose Garden campaign” that involved few stump speeches and lots of back-room deals), he was able to buck the party machinery altogether and strike out as the leader of a new third party, the Progressive Party.

Today, presidential elections revolve so much around personality and “likability.” It’s no surprise that TR’s cousin, Franklin, would understand the power of having this kind of personal connection to voters, cultivating a similar persona through his famous “Fireside Chats” two decades later.

You relate an oddly prophetic quote by then-commerce secretary Herbert Hoover in 1926, years before the stock market crash: “Psychology plays a large part in business movements, and overoptimism can only land us on the shores of overdepression.” This is a more confident, competent Hoover than Americans learn about in school. Has history misunderstood Hoover? If so, in what way?

For sure, a lot about Hoover has been misunderstood or forgotten. This was a man who, up until the Great Depression, was renowned for his managerial skills and his talent for public communication. He has an amazing biography — a poor orphan from Oregon who became a self-made millionaire before the age of 40. President Wilson tapped Hoover to run the U.S. Food Administration during World War I. He was so effective at the job that his name became a verb: housewives “Hooverized” by rationing food to support the war effort. His fame and reputation for being “The Great Engineer” only grew after that.

Then the Depression hit, and it all fell apart. Hoover didn’t realize that the usual remedies would not fix the ailing economy. By the time his administration started to implement bigger, bolder government programs, it was too late to salvage Hoover’s political reputation. His name got affixed to something else that was a symbol of everything that had gone wrong: the shantytowns that sprung up in cities across the country (including Seattle) called “Hoovervilles.”

Richard Nixon fared poorly on television when vying with John F. Kennedy for the presidency in 1960. You write that the “historical resonance” of his 1968 election came in part from how he chose to deliver his message. How did Nixon use the media differently in 1968 to achieve victory?

The 1968 election was all about television. In 1960, Nixon had been a lackluster, sometimes disastrous television presence — stern in manner, flat in delivery and sweaty and combative under the hot lights of live debates.

When he began to consider another presidential run, Nixon hired high-powered Madison Avenue advertising executives — classic Mad Men — who packaged him as slickly as a brand of breakfast cereal. His television appearances were carefully scripted, from Q&A sessions with hand-picked questioners to campaign ads with jangly music, quick-cut visuals and Nixon’s authoritative voiceover.

Still, it wasn’t just the medium, but the message that won Nixon the presidency. He picked up messages that other Republicans — and some Democrats — were using to successfully appeal to a white, working- and middle-class constituency that was bewildered and fearful of all the social changes being beamed into their living rooms. Nixon spoke to a middle America that he called “the silent majority” and by doing so began to build a white, conservative constituency for the Republican Party that continues to this day.

Finally, what do you make of Donald Trump and the current election cycle? Is it possible, in your view, that the Republicans might nominate Trump, and that Americans might elect him? And if not, what’s going on?

Trump is the classic outsider candidate — as are other favorites like Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and Bernie Sanders. This isn’t new, and it builds upon a suspicion of centralized government power that’s been in place since this country’s founding. America was created, after all, to escape the tyranny of kings!

Candidates from Wilson to FDR to Nixon to Clinton ran successfully as “outsider” alternatives to the political establishment. What’s really interesting this cycle is that a lack of any political experience is now a virtue rather than a liability.

It’s too early to tell how long Trump will endure. He has stuck around longer than many pundits expected (partly, of course, because pundits keep writing about him). It is clear that he has struck a chord with a certain segment of voters who — like the Debs and Roosevelt voters in 1912 and the Wallace voters in 1968 — are angry about how things are changing and want leaders who can deliver some bold solutions.

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For more information on “Pivotal Tuesdays,” contact O’Mara at momara@uw.edu. Follow her on Twitter at .

While traditional conservatives seem most motivated by concern over American security, , 91̽»¨professor of political science, suggests that those identifying as tea party conservatives have somewhat more mixed motivations, linked with agitation over the Obama presidency and stemming from a feeling of “losing their country” to a “decline of American ethno-cultural dominance.”

“There is no such thing as ‘conservative’ foreign policy if it means that all conservatives speak with a single voice,” Parker said. “Instead, conservatives are divided on what motivates their foreign policy preferences: securing American interests, or ethno-cultural threat.”

Parker and co-author Rachel Blum, a doctoral student at Georgetown University, came to this view after reviewing recent literature on public attitudes toward foreign policy and examining the 2012 American National Election Study, an in-person and Internet survey of about 6,000 voters by Stanford University and the University of Michigan. They published their views in the October 17, 2014, “” report, published by the Brookings Institution.

The election study, they say, revealed a wide difference between traditional or “establishment” conservatives and their tea party counterparts on the question of whether America was safer than in 2008. Fully 70 percent of tea party conservatives disagreed that America had grown safer in the intervening years, compared to about 39 percent of traditional conservatives.

They noted a significant but smaller difference when respondents were asked if U.S. strength had increased since 2008: Far more tea party conservatives — about 90 percent — disagreed, compared with about 70 percent among more traditional conservatives.

“At first glance, these are fairly innocuous questions,” the researchers wrote. “However, upon closer inspection, 2008 coincides with the beginning of the Obama administration. This makes it likely that respondents are thinking about Obama and his administration’s leadership when they are answering these questions.”

Asked about foreign policy toward Iran, tea partyers and traditional conservatives were in near-total agreement that invasion was not a viable option, but tea partyers more heavily favored only economic sanctions as well as the possible bombing of Iran nuclear sites.

Parker and Blum ascribe these philosophical differences to the differing motivations of the two groups. The tea party, they argue, is motivated largely by “a nationalist sentiment” that dates back to the days of President Andrew Jackson.

“Tea party conservatives, more than establishment conservatives, are motivated by fear and anxiety associated with the belief that the America to which they’ve become accustomed, in which white men have dominated from the beginning, is in rapid decline,” the researchers write.

Parker and 91̽»¨colleague examined political differences between traditional conservatives and tea partyers on domestic issues in their 2013 book, “.” They found overwhelmingly more tea partyers than traditional conservatives agreeing to the extreme statement that President Obama is “destroying the country.”

Parker and Blum argue that the same predisposition carries over to the foreign policy views of tea party conservatives.

“Because conservatives appear split on these important issues,” they conclude, “the midterms promise to pose a challenge, espe­cially in Senate where some seats — and perhaps the balance of power in the upper chamber — may hinge on foreign policy.”

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For more information, contact Parker at 510-285-7770 or csparker@uw.edu.

To govern effectively you have to know the language. And while the language of campaigning is handshakes and hyperbole, the language of governing is money — taxes, bonds, pensions and inevitably, budgets.

The trouble is, many newly elected or appointed officials arrive knowing next to nothing about public finance, says , a public finance specialist with the 91̽»¨’s .

“They don’t know the technical details, and more important, they often don’t know where to learn what they need to know,” said Marlowe. “Many policymakers find this overwhelming, and this is understandable.”

That’s why Marlowe, an associate professor, wrote the “” for , which published it as an insert in its July issue. The 34-page document breaks down the basics of government finance with chapters on the flow of government money, legacy costs such as pensions and investing for long-term stability.

Marlowe said the guide seeks to help policymakers better understand their role in the world of government finance — a more complicated process, he said, than simply following the law. In fact, the guide lists several cautions that may be a surprise to the newcomer to government. These include:

• A government can put a lot of money into its pension fund but still fall short of fully funding it.
• Balancing a budget does not in itself ensure financial sustainability.
• The ongoing federal deficit is a major threat to local and state fiscal health.

Candidates have always run for office on narrow, ideological platforms; that’s just politics.

But the current polarization — people working only with those of like minds — has never been worse, Marlowe said. It makes officials hesitant to admit any lack of financial expertise for fear of being vulnerable to political opponents.

Yet effective governing depends on asking the right questions, Marlowe said. Toward that end, the guide lists sets of “essential questions” in each chapter that new officials should ask and that budget directors or agency heads should be able to answer. These include details on direct and indirect costs, diversity in revenue, reserve funds, legacy costs, audits and more.

Marlowe said the document is intended for local and state officials and people recently appointed to top-level administrative positions in government agencies.

“The whole guide is predicated on the idea that there are thoughtful people out there who want to learn. They really want to know these things — they just don’t know where to start.”

Tellingly, Marlowe said when discussing the planned guide with the magazine’s advisory board, he started with the assumption that most officials had at least a basic understanding of the property tax process. He was told no, assume that someone just elected knows nothing.

“So, the guide starts at the beginning,” Marlowe said, and lays out what every elected official and senior appointed policymaker at the state and local level should know.

“Detroit reminds us that state and local finance is a high stakes, complicated business. When it’s done well, no one notices. When it’s not done well, the consequences are painfully real. That’s why good public finance governance is essential.”

The Guide to Financial Literacy was funded by , which receives support from sponsors including VISA, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo and others. Marlowe was paid for his contribution as an author.

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For more information, contact Marlowe at 206-221-4161 or jmarlowe@uw.edu.

• Watch a video of Marlowe discussing the financial guide, produced by the Evans School of Public Affairs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hst2ZHinFzc&feature=youtu.be

Think of it as big data meeting up with How a Bill Becomes a Law.

“The goal was to get beyond the ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ narrative and let users discover the lawmaking process for themselves,” said Wilkerson, 91̽»¨professor of political science and director of the . The free tool is available at .

The data set is huge indeed: The Legislative Explorer tracks the progress of every bill and resolution introduced in Congress since 1973 — 250,000 in all. It notes each time a bill or resolution advances from one stage of the process to the next, in or out of committee or moves to the floor for consideration, totaling about 750,000 such movements.

http://vimeo.com/91846611

Users can drill down through the graphically presented data in lots of ways, including by type of legislation, sponsors, party or chamber of origin. The tool also has filters allowing users to sort results many ways, including by gender of sponsoring legislator, committee affiliation and — perhaps most helpful of all — whether the legislation is considered major or minor.

“The basic idea was to apply the data-driven discovery methods used increasingly in the natural sciences to bring big data to the lawmaking process,” Wilkerson said.

Wilkerson and collaborators suggest students or researchers might start by observing how many bills are introduced in each Congress and how many die along the way or are sent to the president and become law. They also suggest researchers should keep certain caveats in mind, including the reminder that bills vary in importance and get substantially changed or combined with others. The 906-page Affordable Care Act, Wilkerson noted, started out as a six-page bill on service members’ home ownership.

Wilkerson collaborated with , a 91̽»¨doctoral student in political science, who organized the data underlying the online tool. The two also hired , a Seattle-based creative design and technology studio, to create and maintain the site.

Wilkerson said those using the online tool may find Congress a good deal busier than they expected. “There’s still a lot happening in Congress, but more of it these days is getting stuck at the stage where the House and Senate have to reconcile their differences.”

Future improvements, Wilkerson said, may include tracking the impact of legislation that becomes law. For example, “What happens when Congress passes a law? How does it impact the existing authorities of the federal government and the regulatory activities of federal agencies?”

The project was funded in part by revenue from , which provides tools for legislative simulation courses, and by the National Science Foundation.

Wilkerson said the tool seeks to enable citizens to become better informed about the complex legislative process, beyond simplistic descriptions and media coverage centering mostly on Congressional controversies.

“It doesn’t address everything the people might want to know, but we think the Legislative Explorer will advance public interest and understanding of ‘their’ Legislature,” he said.

“But don’t worry,” Wilkerson added. “It’s not the end of ‘Schoolhouse Rock.'”

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Find the Legislative Explorer online at . For more information, contact Wilkerson at 206-543-8030 or jwilker@uw.edu. (NSF grant number is SES-1243917.)