Cambridge Analytica and the digital war in Africa

[milestogo]

Across the continent, UK expertise is being deployed online to sway elections and target dissidents. Cambridge Analytica, the British political consultancy caught up in a huge scandal over its use of Facebook data, has boasted that they ran the successful campaigns of President Uhuru Kenyatta in the 2013 and 2017 Kenyan elections. In a secretly filmed video, Mark Turnbull, a managing director for Cambridge Analytica and sister company SCL Elections, told a Channel 4 News’ undercover investigative reporting team that his firm secretly stage-managed Kenyatta’s hotly contested campaigns. “We have rebranded the entire party twice, written the manifesto, done research, analysis, messaging. I think we wrote all the speeches and we staged the whole thing – so just about every element of this candidate,” Turnbull said of his firm’s work for Kenyatta’s party.

Cambridge Analytica boasts of manipulating voters’ deepest fears and worries. Last year’s Kenyan election was dogged by vicious online propaganda targeting opposition leader Raila Odinga, with images and films playing on people’s concerns about everything from terrorism to spiralling disease. No-one knows who produced the material. Cambridge Analytica denies involvement with these toxic videos – a claim that is hard to square with the company’s boast that they “staged the whole thing.” In any event, Kenyatta came to power in 2013 and won a second and final term last August, defeating Odinga by 1.4 million votes.

The work of this British company is only the tip of the iceberg. Another company, the public relations firm, Bell Pottinger, has apologised for stirring up racial hostility in South Africa on behalf of former President Jacob Zuma’s alleged financiers – the Gupta family. Bell Pottinger has since gone out of business. Some electoral manipulation has been home grown. During the 2016 South African municipal elections the African National Congress established its own media manipulations operation.

Called the “war room” it was the ANC’s own “black ops” centre. The operation ranged from producing fake posters, apparently on behalf of opposition parties, to establishing 200 fake social media “influencers”. The team launched a news site, The New South African, which claimed to be a “platform for new voices offering a different perspective of South Africa”. The propaganda branded opposition parties as vehicles for the rich and not caring for the poor.


https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2018/03/cambridge-analytica-facebook-elections-africa-kenya

Kenya - South Africa - Ethiopia - Cambridge Analytica and other companies are screwing with democratic elections all over the world - on Putin's behalf.

[backtoblue]

1. They want to destroy democracy

There was an interview with some other data collection fuckers and they pretty much admitted to it. I posted the video (long, but really informative) in V &M. Can't copy to it, but I'll go in there and kick it up in case ya wanna watch.

[sandensea]

2. In Argentina and the Czech Republic as well.

They set up shop in 2013 in Argentina on behalf of right-wing candidate Mauricio Macri, known as the "Argentine Trump." The reportedly used a cutout, Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL).

Amid a massive fake news campaign on social media, Macri went on to win two years later by 2.7% - making it plausible to assume C.A. swung the election.

[democratisphere]

3. drumpf spends hundreds of billions on physical bombs and weapons

while the world's democracies are under siege and being annihilated by a propaganda cyberwar with blackmail extraordinaire.

[struggle4progress]

4. I had wondered why Bannon was visiting French wingnuts

Now I guess I know