Digital Campaigning and Electoral Democracy (DiCED)
WTM Survey & Ads
You are being invited to take part in a research study looking at people’s experience of online election advertising during the UK General election . The study will involve your completing a survey now and then immediately after the election about your views on politics and the issues that are important to you. The surveys should each take no more than 15 mins of your time. We are also interested in people’s views on events that may happen during the course of the campaign and at the end of the survey we will invite you to join our online election panel where you will have the chance to regularly contribute your views on the campaign and key issues being discussed as we get closer to the election.
The research is funded by the European Commission, and is part of an international study that will compare online election advertising in the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Poland.
Before you agree to take part in the study would like to give you some further information about why and how it is being conducted, what happens to your data. Please take time to read this information and to discuss it with others if you wish. Please contact us at DiCED@manchester.ac.uk if anything that is not clear or if you would like more information.
Thank you for taking the time to read this!
About the research
- Who will conduct the research?
Professor Rachel Gibson from the University of Manchester will conduct the research with Who Targets Me. She is an established political scientist who has conducted several national and international research projects on online campaigns and elections and published widely on the topic in a number of international journals and books. See www.rachelgibson.info
- What is the purpose of the research?
The research is designed to understand to how new forms of online and digital campaigning are affecting our democracy in terms of the information citizens receive and whether this affects how they think about politicians and parties. You have been asked to participate given that you live in the UK, use digital media and are likely to experience the campaign both online and in the ‘real world’.
- Will the outcomes of the research be published?
The results of the research will be published primarily in the form of academic books and a range of peer reviewed journals. Shorter reports on key findings may also be published on the project website https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/diced/ and in occasional pieces written for the news media as articles or blog posts.
- Who has reviewed the research project?
The project has been reviewed by the University of Manchester Research Ethics Committee 3.
- Who is funding the research project?
The DiCED project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC)(Grant agreement No. 833177)
What would my involvement be?
- What would I be asked to do if I took part?
As part of the study you would be asked to complete a short pre-election (15mins) survey and another short post-election survey (15mins). The surveys will ask you some questions about your political views and understanding of the campaign. The Who Targets Me browser extension that you have installed will continue as normal. You may of course choose not to participate. This will have no implications for the working of Who Targets Me (WTM) browser extension that you have installed and no detrimental or adverse effect on you or your participation in any future Who Targets Me research panel.
After the post-election survey, WTM will provide the DiCED Researchers with your survey responses and the Facebook Ads data that they have collected from the browser extension. In each case the data will only be identified by an anonymised key provided by WTM to allow us to join the survey responses with the Ads data
- Will I be compensated for taking part?
To compensate you for your time, upon completion of the study you will be entered into a prize draw for a chance to win the following:
1x £500 amazon gift voucher
5 x £100 amazon gift voucher
The prize draw is run and managed by Who Targets me.
- What happens if I do not want to take part or if I change my mind?
It is up to you to decide whether or not to take part. You are free to withdraw from the study at any time without providing a reason and without detriment to yourself by emailing Diced@manchester.ac.uk. If you do decide to take part you will be asked to complete an on-line consent form where you will tick a box to confirm consent. A copy of this information sheet can be downloaded from https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/diced/wtm_survey_ad_pis_uk/ . If you decide to take part you are still free to withdraw at any time without giving a reason and without detriment to yourself. However, it will not be possible to remove your data from the project once it has been anonymised as we will not be able to identify your specific data. This does not affect your data protection rights. If you decide not to take part you do not need to do anything further.
Data Protection and Confidentiality
- What information will you collect about me?
In order to participate in this research project we will need to collect information that could identify you, called “personal identifiable information”. Specifically we will need to collect:
- Location (postcode) and Demographic information (age, gender, education, income)
- Information on your political views (interest in the election, if you are voting and which party you support, your position on election issues, media sources you use, your level of liberalism or conservatism, how satisfied you are with democracy in the UK)
- Information on your personal outlook – if you consider yourself to be open, cautious, creative, extraverted etc.)
With your permission, your survey responses will be matched with the ad data collected by the Who Targets Me browser extension that you have installed, and any personal information you provided in setting it up, so that we can gain as full a picture as possible of how UK voters are experiencing the digital campaign. You will be asked if you agree to this matching in the consent form that you will be asked to complete before you take the survey.
- Under what legal basis are you collecting this information?
We are collecting and storing this personal identifiable information in accordance with UK data protection law which protect your rights. These state that we must have a legal basis (specific reason) for collecting your data. For this study, the specific reason is that it is “a public interest task” and “a process necessary for research purposes”.
- What are my rights in relation to the information you will collect about me?
You have a number of rights under data protection law regarding your personal information. For example you can request a copy of the information we hold about you.
If you would like to know more about your different rights or the way we use your personal information to ensure we follow the law, please consult our Privacy Notice for Research.
- Will my participation in the study be confidential and my personal identifiable information be protected?
In accordance with data protection law, The University of Manchester / WTM are jointly the Data Controller for this project. The data is initially collected by WTM and then transferred in anonymous form to the DiCED Researchers at the University of Manchester (UoM). This means that we are responsible for making sure your personal information is kept secure, confidential and used only in the way you have been told it will be used. All researchers are trained with this in mind, and your data will be looked after in the following way:
Only Who Targets Me and the DiCED study team will have access to your survey responses and personal information
Should you be a prize winner you will be contacted by WTM in line with their normal processes.
Data will be anonymised by WTM before being sent to UoM.
Data will be encrypted before transfer directly to the UoM DiCED secure server.
We will keep the anonymized data for a period of up to 10 years. This is to allow for comparison of the data with subsequent elections in the project which runs until 2025 and then to permit post-project analysis for research articles and books that will be published from our work.
The data will be held by WTM initially and then transferred to the University of Manchester to be stored locally. It will not be transferred or sent to any other users or institutions.
In addition to the University of Manchester and University of Sheffield DiCED project team members, DiCED project team members based at other institutions in the U.K., U.S., Germany and France will be given remote access to the data for analysis purposes. Any data made available to them will be fully anonymized.
Please also note that individuals from The University of Manchester or regulatory authorities may need to look at the data collected for this study to make sure the project is being carried out as planned. This may involve looking at identifiable data. All individuals involved in auditing and monitoring the study will have a strict duty of confidentiality to you as a research participant.
What if I have a complaint?
- Contact details for complaints
If you have a complaint that you wish to direct to members of the research team, please contact: Diced@manchester.ac.uk
The Research Ethics Manager, Research Office, Christie Building, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, by emailing: research.complaints@manchester.ac.uk or by telephoning 0161 306 8089.
If you wish to contact us about your data protection rights, please email dataprotection@manchester.ac.uk or write to The Information Governance Office, Christie Building, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, M13 9PL at the University and we will guide you through the process of exercising your rights.
You also have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office about complaints relating to your personal identifiable information Tel 0303 123 1113
Contact Details
If you have any queries about the study or if you are interested in taking part then please contact the DiCED research team at Diced@manchester.ac.uk
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