Cyber information operations: Cambridge Analytica’s challenge to democratic legitimacy

ABSTRACT

In an era of digital governance, liberal democracy is rapidly transforming to leverage new information technologies as well as contend with them. However, the digitisation of democracy is not without vulnerability. Digitisation has enabled non-state information operations actors (IOAs) to interfere with democratic processes at an unprecedented level and jeopardise the legitimacy of democratic decision-making. One of the first IOAs to digitally interfere in elections was Cambridge Analytica. While some commentators have acknowledged the potential harm that Cambridge Analytica posed to democracy, we are yet to fully understand how the quality of legitimacy, as a crucial component of democracy, can be eroded by non-state IOAs’ electoral interference. The paper explores the growing digital threat landscape to offer scholars a new way of thinking about political campaigning as a vector of electoral interference and deepen conceptualizations of input legitimacy. Adopting a case-study approach, I apply theories of political legitimacy alongside democratic theory to analyse the ways in which Cambridge Analytica challenged three axioms of liberal democracy pertinent to decision-making – participation, pluralism and enlightened understanding – and provide policy recommendations for mitigating the threat to democratic legitimacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Information operations
• political campaigning
• Cambridge Analytica
• microtargeting
• political legitimacy
• digital democracy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Note that the Trinidad and Tobago campaign was technically conducted by Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL. However, the two companies overlapped to an extent uncommon in such a corporate structure. Cambridge Analytica, once incorporated in 2013, became responsible for elections work previously conducted as part of SCL. Nix was CEO of both companies.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Department of Defence, Australian Government.

Notes on contributors

Melissa-Ellen Dowling

Melissa-Ellen Dowling is a Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide. Her research interests centre around democratic resilience, foreign interference, digital information operations and national security policy. Currently, Dr Dowling is engaged in projects exploring cyber information operations and their impact on Australian democracy.