Scheer Builds Creepy Psychological profiles from data mining

[justincase]

Hamish Marshall says he’s a ‘huge fan’ of using of psychological data to target voters, but cautions it’s ‘not for the faint of heart’

March 22, 2018 SHARE TWEET
Hamish Marshall, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer’s campaign manager for the 2019 election, says he’s a “huge fan” of building detailed psychological profiles of Canadian voters and targeting them with personalized political messages.

Big data and politics took an unsurprisingly dystopian turn this week after a series of bombshell revelations about Cambridge Analytica – a data analytics firm once run by Steve Bannon and bankrolled by reclusive billionaire Robert Mercer that claims it used “psychographic data” to engineer Brexit and the election of Donald Trump.

According to The Guardian, Cambridge Analytica scraped Facebook data from over 200 million people to create “sophisticated psychological and political profiles and then target them with political ads designed to work on their particular psychological makeup.”

The whistleblower at the centre of the Cambridge Analytica revelations calls it “Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare mindf–k tool.”


The Guardian

Many ordinary Canadians are likely unaware that similar techniques are already being used to wage “psychological warfare” in Canadian politics too.

Last year, at the Manning Centre’s Alberta Networking Conference in Red Deer, Hamish Marshall – a backroom conservative strategist who founded the right Rebel Media website and ran Andrew Scheer’s Conservative leadership campaign – told conservative activists they need to focus on the “emotions” of individual voters if they ever hope to win again.

“We all think a lot about technology, but a lot of what we have to deal with, frankly, is human psychology,” Marshall explained during a panel on “Modern Campaigning.”

Moderator Jeromy Farkas, a Calgary city councillor, later asked Marshall to share his thoughts on “data-driven psychometrics in designing the message and the medium.”

“I’m a huge fan of it,” Marshall said.

Psychometrics (or psychographics) is mainly interested in measuring psychological traits and predicting behaviours, usually by combining enormous amounts of data or even analyzing the digital footprints of Internet users.

Recounting how he and pollster Dimitri Pantazopoulos, a fellow panelist, collected troves of data to build psychological profiles on Canadian voters to “help the Harper government craft the things that helped them win in 2008,” Marshall said he finds it “extremely useful.”

“Combining psychographic information, demographics about someone’s psychology is extraordinarily useful”– although Marshall cautioned: “it’s not for the faint of heart.”

As one example of how deep Conservatives are drilling into the psyches of voters to personalize political messages, Marshall said he even tracks the “self-confidence” levels of Canadian voters.



Until recently, Marshall was the president of Torch Agency, a firm that combines public opinion research and political communications.

The agency’s website advertises its specialization in “psychographic analysis” and “advanced targeting.”

“We specialize in building custom psychographic profiles of the customers, voters and audiences you need to reach,” promising the agency can “find out what they think, what they care about and how you can communicate with them on issues that matter.”


Torch Agency

The website gives no indication how it obtains reliable data to provide “custom psychographic profiles” to clients.

The website does indicate several past clients are major Canadian political parties, including the federal Conservative Party of Canada, the Ontario PCs, the Manitoba PCs and the Saskatchewan Party. The nature of the work Torch Agency provided is not disclosed.

Marshall has also counted both Jason Kenney and Alberta’s United Conservative Party Caucus as clients too.


Torch Agency

Not unlike Steve Bannon, Marshall’s love for data found synergy with his role as director of an right media outlet, Canada’s Breitbart knock-off: Rebel Media

Marshall told Maclean’s he was only “involved in helping them with technological and web aspects of the business,” but in actuality, he played a central role harvesting data from Rebel Media viewers and managing their database.

In fact, Marshall even worked out of an office at Rebel Media’s Toronto studio.

In October, Marshall announced he was leaving Rebel Media and then in January, Torch Agency merged with another communications firm and teamed up with Terrance Oakey, former president of the anti-union lobby group Merit Canada, to create a new entity called “ONE Persuades.”


ONE Persuades

Following revelations about Cambridge Analytica’s use of psychographic data, faculty and students at the University of Cambridge’s Psychometrics Centre released a statement distancing research in their field from the “alleged use of psychographics, microtargeting and fake news networks by political campaigns.”

The statement calls for greater attention to “privacy” and “ethics” in the field of psychographics, suggesting use of “psychological prediction tools” should be more transparent, provide a clear benefit to the public and emphasizes that “nobody should have predictions made about them without their prior consent.”

https://pressprogress.ca/andrew-scheers ... oters-too/

[justincase]

This is getting upsetting. Every party wants to win an election, but........................

[Veovis]

This is getting upsetting. Every party wants to win an election, but........................

some of them have loons spams forums................

[Jack DeBear]

An interesting discussion from last night.

[The Green Barbarian]

An interesting discussion from last night.

This guy is certainly getting his 15 minutes of fame...

[justincase]

The question is now, is anybody feeling angry, upset, over the fake accusation by The Rebel's Hamish Marshall and the all-night vote by the Conservatives on the Atwal affair to stir up some more fake outrage? It doesn't appear so on social media.

[The Green Barbarian]

The question is now, is anybody feeling angry, upset, over the fake accusation by The Rebel's Hamish Marshall and the all-night vote by the Conservatives on the Atwal affair to stir up some more fake outrage? It doesn't appear so on social media.

Nope - because first of all, you are just trolling for the Boy-King so no one knows if this is an actual story, and secondly, no one believes this accusation is actually false. After what the bonehead Liberals pulled in India, and are now desperately trying to cover up, their credibility is shot, and that's why they are dropping like a stone at the polls.

[Jack DeBear]

An interesting discussion from last night.

This guy is certainly getting his 15 minutes of fame...

LOL, more like 15 seconds.

Ooops, sorry, I thought you meant Andrew Scheer.

[Ka-El]

The question is now, is anybody feeling angry, upset, over the fake accusation by The Rebel's Hamish Marshall and the all-night vote by the Conservatives on the Atwal affair to stir up some more fake outrage? It doesn't appear so on social media.

It seems that this is now pretty much not a story after it has been made clear the Liberals did nothing even remotely different from what every other party in Canada was and is already doing. Is this really our only other choice come next election?

[justincase]

The question is now, is anybody feeling angry, upset, over the fake accusation by The Rebel's Hamish Marshall and the all-night vote by the Conservatives on the Atwal affair to stir up some more fake outrage? It doesn't appear so on social media.

It seems that this is now pretty much not a story after it has been made clear the Liberals did nothing even remotely different from what every other party in Canada was and is already doing. Is this really our only other choice come next election?

But, the Liberals went even further and ended their relationship prematurely when they looked at the data....Righteous.

[Jlabute]

Sure, the liberals paid Wiley $100,000 in 2016 for consulting... probably because he did a great service for them in 2007 to 2009. No one knows what they did, JT won’t talk about it, it’s all a secret.

“Wylie described using a Facebook survey as an entry point to collect user data, and the pair discussed the ethical concerns surrounding the method, said the acquaintance.

By 2009, during Wylie’s stint working for the Liberal leader’s office, he had already begun to develop strategies on how politicians could capitalize on information collected through social media, another former Liberal insider said earlier this week.”

Damn liberals pioneered our manipulation and made Wylie what he is today

[justincase]

removed.

[justincase]

Sure, the liberals paid Wiley $100,000 in 2016 for consulting... probably because he did a great service for them in 2007 to 2009. No one knows what they did, JT won’t talk about it, it’s all a secret.

News flash, Liberals lost the election in 2006/2009

“Wylie described using a Facebook survey as an entry point to collect user data, and the pair discussed the ethical concerns surrounding the method, said the acquaintance.

The Liberals looked at the evidence, decided it's not ethical and discontinued their business relationship....done! (that's the type of behavior Canadians expect from our politicians. All eyes on you now Hamish Marshall)

By 2009, during Wylie’s stint working for the Liberal leader’s office, he had already begun to develop strategies on how politicians could capitalize on information collected through social media, another former Liberal insider said earlier this week.”

OMG....he worked for a stint

[The Green Barbarian]

. All eyes on you now Hamish Marshall)

And that's a good thing. I didn't know much about this guy, but now that you've brought him to my attention, I really like him. He went to Oxford, and before that Trinity University, so he has some religious background too. I am a fan of politicians who go to universities with Trinity in the title.

[Gone_Fishin]

. All eyes on you now Hamish Marshall)

And that's a good thing. I didn't know much about this guy, but now that you've brought him to my attention, I really like him. He went to Oxford, and before that Trinity University, so he has some religious background too. I am a fan of politicians who go to universities with Trinity in the title.

Trinity Western University comes to mind. Good school with proper values.