Dr Lucy Hennings
Research Programme Manager
Lucy works as Programme Manager for the Dieter Schwarz Foundation Research Programmes on AI & Work, and AI, Government and Technology.
On July 4, 2024, the UK will vote in a general election, after the announcement of a snap poll by the current Conservative Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. Voters will elect Members of Parliament (MPs) for all 650 constituencies across the UK. The last general election was held in 2019, when the former Conservative leader, Boris Johnson, led his party to a landslide victory. However, the subsequent years have seen major challenges to the UK, including implementation of Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the economic impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Conservative party has also been beset by a series of public scandals, leading to a series of high-profile byelection defeats, and a consistent double-digit disadvantage in the polls (BBC News, 2024b).
As the Labour party, under the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer, seeks to bring an end to fourteen years of Tory government, it faces a changed electoral landscape. Constituency boundaries were redrawn across the UK in 2023, changing the electoral makeup of parliamentary seats (Baker and Johnston, 2024). This will be the first general election to be held since the passage of the Elections Act in April 2022, requiring photographic ID for all voters. Ministers claimed the change would protect democracy, but opponents to the measure have criticized it as attempted voter suppression (BBC News, 2021; Financial Times, 2024). At the same time changes to strict campaign finance limits with the “regulated period” of the election have led to an 80% increase in the total spending permitted to political parties, with the limit rising from £19 million to £34 million in November 2023 (Institute for Government, 2024).
In this context, this article will explore the changing landscape of social media campaigning for what promises to be a highly consequential election. It will also examine the threats to the information environment during the campaign, including foreign influence operations and role of generative AI in driving misinformation. In an election dominated by hot-button issues such as immigration, tax cuts, and the national health service, issues around digital policy are less clearly defined, and there are However, we are seeing emerging areas of concern around technology use and mental well-being, as well as AI regulation and online safety. The Conservative Party manifesto makes extensive reference to new technologies in industrial strategy and to improve public services, while the Labour party has made a more modest and more achievable manifesto commitment to “deliver data-driven public services, whilst maintaining strong safeguards and ensuring all of the public benefit”.
“The First TikTok Election”: The Role of Digital Campaigning
Over the past three decades, UK elections have seen an growth in digital campaigning, with the internet and social media in particular playing a role of growing prominence in the activities all the main political parties (Gibson, 2020). This is, in part, a response to the changing patterns of news consumption. In 2012, 85% of UK adults received their news from television, and 53% from radio, according to the media regulator, Ofcom. In that same period, the use of the Internet to access news has grown from 41% to 68%. Social media plays a key role in this process, with 47% of UK adults accessing news this way – for young adults, 71% use social media for news (Ofcom, 2023; The Telegraph, 2024).
In this election cycle, the role played by social media is evolving from previous years. While Facebook continues to be the most popular social media platform for news access (Ofcom, 2023) the growing importance of other platforms requires campaigns to adopt a more multi-faceted social media campaign. While parties are already spending large sums on social media campaigns (The Guardian, 2024c), the nature of this advertising is not identical to previous elections. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, digital campaigners are turning away from microtargeting strategies, both in response to platforms’ attempts to crack down on these behaviours, and due to ongoing questions about techniques (Tappin et al., 2023; The Guardian, 2024d). Indeed, research has increasingly put the grandest claims about microtargeting to the test, and it appears that they are not set to be borne out (Hackenburg and Margetts, 2024). Instead, the Labour Party’s social media campaigning appears to be aimed at reaching the widest possible audience, while analysis suggests that the Conservatives are focusing on the most marginal seats from the 2019 general election (The Guardian, 2024e).
In addition to traditional social media advertising, the recent and rapid growth of TikTok as a news source has raised the profile of that platform for political campaigns, with all major parties rapidly seeking to build their TikTok presence. In 2020, only 1% of UK adults reported using TikTok as a source of news, a figure that had risen dramatically to 10% in 2024 (Ofcom, 2023). While this growth has led to claims that the 2024 UK General Election will be the first TikTok election, the nature of the platform and its affordances present challenges for political campaigning.
As paid advertisements are prohibited on TikTok, and the platform’s recommendation algorithm is known to be opaque, politicians can only rely on their content to drive engagement, with varying degrees of success (Sky News, 2024b). The user base of TikTok also raises questions about its utility in reaching persuadable voters, as recent polling has founds its user base to be significantly more likely to vote Labour than non-users of the same age (The Guardian, 2024a). What is becoming clear is that MPs who have developed organic content on the platform before the election are able to achieve a far wider following than more senior politicians new to the platform – the Labour backbencher Zarah Sultana had 445,000 followers at the start of the election campaign, compared to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, with only 13,000. However as a young Muslim left-wing woman she also holds the unenviable position of being the British politician most abused online (Evening Standard, 2024). The Reform Party leader and candidate for MP in Clacton-on-Sea, Nigel Farage, far outpaces both Sultana and Sunak in numbers of followers, with a current TikTok following of over 793,000. As the various parties seek to integrate new media platforms into their strategies to drive voter engagement and encourage turnout, it is unclear at this stage how significant a role attempts to incorporate TikTok into political campaigns will prove (Walker, 2024).
Misinformation, Foreign Influence Campaigns and Generative AI
In a period of extreme voter volatility there is increasing concern about electoral interference, and particularly about the potential role of artificial intelligence in driving misinformation (Fieldhouse et al., 2019). Concerns about foreign election interference dating back to 2015 and the subsequent Brexit referendum campaign, with the associated exposure of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and dishonest use of microtargeting on Facebook (89up, 2018; Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, 2019).
This debate influenced the subsequent passage of the Online Safety Bill but concerns about election interference still remain heightened. Concerns have been raised about the potential for cyberattacks, as well as the circulation of harmful false news stories intended to destabilise political society (National Cyber Security Centre, 2023; The Guardian, 2024b; The Times, 2024; Vanity Fair, 2024). The concerns have been turbocharged by fears about the role that generative AI could play in producing election-disrupting disinformation and deepfakes. With the increasing accessibility of generative AI tools, these have been presented as creating the conditions for democracy destabilising disinformation at a massive scale (Axios, 2023).
Certainly, there is reason to be concerned about the potential use of this technology, including in the UK. In the recent Indian elections, AI generated content was shared widely, including to resurrect dead politicians (Al Jazeera, 2024). AI tools have been shown to be able to produce fabricated audio and visual content, including content targeting prominent UK politicians (BBC News, 2024c; Center for Countering Digital Hate, 2024). Even without malicious intent, AI tools have been shown to produce misleading content, with ChatGPT telling users that Labour had won the election a month before it takes place (Sky News, 2024a). Synthetic audio claiming to depict recordings of Starmer and London mayor Sadiq Khan have spread in viral fashion online, with the potential to stoke hate and division, as well as to try and influence elections (BBC News, 2023a; Sky News, 2023). In an election in which TikTok is playing an increasingly prominent role, there are already concerning signs that TikTok users across the UK are encountering a proliferating supply of AI generated fakes, and abusive content (BBC News, 2024e). There is some emerging concern about the deployment of networks of inauthentic bot accounts to promote Reform UK, including on TikTok, however there are limited signs of more coordinated information operations or activities by hostile foreign actors (BBC News, 2024a). While some manipulated images to circulate widely during this election campaign have been unsophisticated edits, and more puerile than dangerous, the extent to which such content is shared could present an ominous precedent for the deployment of more dangerous disinformation campaigns (Full Fact, 2024). While AI has yet to play a significant impact in the UK elections, the upcoming US elections in November 2024 present a much higher level of risk, in a data-rich information environment, where AI has already been used to spread not only inauthentic content about political candidates, but even false or misleading information about how to vote (Angwin, Nelson, and Palta, 2024).
However, while concerns about the role of AI in misinformation campaigns have received significant commentary and attention, it is not clear how effective such AI-generated content actually is. The alarmist tone of the warnings around AI have arguably overstated the risks posed by this technology to transform misinformation (Simon, Altay, and Mercier, 2023), while it is not clear that such technology has yet been shown to have a provable impact on electoral behaviour (Łabuz and Nehring, 2024). Indeed, it has been argued that overly alarmist rhetoric around AI-driven misinformation may in itself be harmful, as it sows distrust in the broader information environment (Hameleers, 2023). On a more mundane level, while some analyses have shown hostile state actors already making use of AI to generate disinformation (The Washington Post, 2024), analyses also show that their technical capacity in doing so is currently limited (WIRED, 2024).
While this threat profile may change in the future, from the 2024 UK general campaigning to date, the uses of AI-generated content have not yet been demonstrated to cause electoral, rather than personal, harm.
Digital Policy and Online Safety
With a general election campaign dominated by hot button political issues, including, immigration, the National Health Service, and the cost of living, relatively little attention has been drawn to digital policy, and there few clearly drawn points of distinction between the main parties.
With the extended public debate around artificial intelligence, there might have been expectations for more clearly outlined policy commitments on this area. Indeed, the role of the UK in AI governance had previously appeared to be a personal priority for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Building on the National AI strategy published by the government in 2021, a joint white paper was published in March 2023 by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Office for Artificial Intelligence. Promoting a pro-innovation strategy, Sunak has repeatedly asserted that the UK has a leading role to play in AI regulation (Financial Times 2023; Reuters, 2023). In subsequently hosting the UK summit on AI Safety at Bletchley Park in November 2023, Sunak again highlighted the potential risks of AI and the UK’s ambition to lead on AI regulation (BBC News, 2023b).
However, beyond a commitment to double digital and AI expertise in the civil service, the Conservative manifesto outlined no specific policies on AI regulation. The Conservative Party in particular are keen to emphasise the importance of investing in artificial intelligence as part of their industrial strategy, but the Labour Party, as well as the centre-left Liberal Democrats and the left-wing Green party, also committed to the importance of AI regulation.
While politicians across the spectrum invite artificial intelligence as the latest innovation in digitalisation poised to deliver efficiency savings to the functioning of government, specific references to the benefits of individual technologies do not amount to a coherent digitalisation strategy. In the face of the barriers to efficiency posed by outdated IT systems and legacy data, the lack of clear priorities on sustained digital transformation raise questions about the capacity of any party platform to realise the benefits attributed to new technologies (National Audit Office, 2023).
Steps to tackle online harms are being framed as an increasing priority across various party platforms. However, in considering the path forward after the passage of the Online Safety Act in 2023, the measures proposed range considerably. On the left of the political spectrum, both the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party have advanced some form of a Digital Bill of Rights, to regulate social media companies and protect users online.
Concern about adolescent mental health features strongly in the discussion across all parties: the Conservative manifesto proposes a consultation on banning smartphones, while the right-wing Reform UK party have instead suggest the promotion of App-restricted child friendly smartphones. In contrast, the Labour party have proposed strengthening elements of the Online Safety Act in order to increase the power of coroners to access data from social media companies in cases involving the death of a child. Taking a different approach, the Liberal Democrats have instead proposed tripling the Digital Services Tax on social media and other tech firms in order to fund mental health professionals in all schools (BBC News, 2024d). Overall, as with the other policy areas discussed, the proposals currently being shared tend to focus on a handful of specific issues, rather than representing political parties with a clear and coherent strategy in digital policy for the UK in 2024.
Conclusion
It is perhaps inevitable that in an election where the polling appears to predict an historical landslide result, and where the overwhelming policy focus is on key issues around the health service, taxation and the immigration, that questions of digital policy have been of lower priority in party manifestos, and have received little to any attention in political campaigning. However, as we reflect on an election in which digital campaigning plays a role of increasing importance, and the concern about harms from technologies only continues to grow, this should perhaps be a moment for reflection on the future needs of UK policy in this area.
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