Navigating the Impact of Digital Political Marketing in a Growingly Digitized, Polarized Society

March 26, 2026

By: Pia Cho

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The History of Political Marketing; a Remarkable Fluidity Across Eras

Political marketing has been a transformative process throughout eras. From the Behistun Inscription in 515 BCE, to the digital revolution of the 20th century, political marketing has undertaken evolving mediums to keep up with technological advancements and support the volatile nature of international affairs and political dynamics.

It is important to note that the term “political marketing” is relatively new, surfacing in 1950 when presidential candidate General Dwight Eisenhower hired an advertising agency to work on his image during the election campaign. It is defined as a methodology in which political ideas and campaign candidates are advertised to appeal to voters, in exchange for the support of said voters. However, before the widespread acceptance of this term, any process regarding political messaging was known as propaganda, the deliberate, systematic dissemination of biased, misleading, or false information designed to manipulate public opinion and behavior to advance a specific political cause, leader, or agenda.

The most prominent usage of political propaganda was marked by the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. Spanning into the 20th century, pamphlets, posters, and books were the primary sources of political advertisement. In the early 20th century war times, the surge of iconic military WWI and WWII recruitment posters flooded the media, establishing a presence for persuasive political messaging during critical, turbulent periods requiring national action. However, over the following years, these mediums of propaganda were abandoned due to the rise of progressive perspectives within society that disagreed with the stereotypical illustrations, biased messaging, and misinformed tones of such advertisements.

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This transition was best marked by the digital revolution in the 21st century; replacing tangible propagandist mediums, the rise of digital communication channels was able to completely rebrand political advertisement. Since the 2020 election, political marketers have relied specifically on social media platforms and the internet as pertinent channels of communication and influence. According to experts, video advertising is expected to dominate the world of politics during the 2026 midterm elections, as political advertisers prepare to drop an estimated 11.2 billion dollars on video ads. 

With the widespread adoption of digital political marketing campaigns, the unique opportunities for consumer coercion, privacy breaches, and misinformation online have become some of the modern world’s most grave social concerns.   

Microtargeting, a Modern-Day Marketing Tactic or Privacy Breach?

A specific cornerstone of political marketing is microtargeting, a technique that involves tailoring messages to specific segments of the electorate based on detailed data. The execution of microtargeting campaigns is entirely reliant on mass collection of consumer data, which has been scrutinized for privacy breaches and raised concerns of ethicality violations on multiple occasions. 

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During the 2016 election, British political consulting and data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, harvested data from millions of Facebook users to build detailed psychological profiles to inform segmentation and drive highly targeted ads without proper consent from users. This scandal resulted in the involvement of legislative powers to reconstitute an acceptable data collection policy, leaving a lasting distrust among consumers.  

In general, microtargeting is a common practice in modern-day digital marketing, with 83% of marketers believing that data-driven campaigns are essential to business growth. In non-political industries, the malpractice of microtargeting has certainly raised red flags and garnered distrust from the public, but never to the extent of government intervention seen in scandals within the political marketing industry.

The significant public backlash in cases within the political marketing industry specifically, symbolizes its perceived power of influence. With data collection and analysis on sensitive topics such as voter history, political views, and policy preferences, the outcomes of political marketing campaigns extend beyond traditional product marketing tactics such as influencing purchase decisions. Rather, they carry a dense, complex power to influence entire democratic systems and the trajectory of a nation’s welfare. 

The Ironically Polarizing Effect of Social Media

Information and communication technology (ICT), such as social media platforms or internet sites, holds immense potential for social unity and societal advancement on multiple levels. However, their highly saturated user base and the nature of fast-paced information dispersal pose a threat to societal stability if left unchecked. In a political context, these risks are only amplified.

The video content market now makes up approximately 82% of all internet traffic, with short-form dominating that share. The rise of such mediums have prompted a proliferation of both commission-based and organic amateur creator reports and advertisements on political topics. The growing concerns with this type of video format lie in the credibility of such creators; opinion-based, non-expert reports on nuanced political topics have been scrutinized for begetting emotionally-charged or inaccurate content, portraying a distorted version of reality.  

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In recent practice, this distortion has been highly damaging to a democracy’s image and has been observed to exacerbate polarization amongst political communities. Take the media’s reaction to the death of Alex Pretti for example, a 37-year old American man killed by ICE agents during a protest in Minneapolis on January 24, 2026. The public responded to this incident with unfaltering uproar; from crime scene footage from every angle, call-to-action TikToks, to defensive tweets on behalf of the federal government, the media became a buzzing array of angry chirps from all sides of the political spectrum. 

Social media platforms are notorious for amplifying extremism; platforms like TikTok deepen polarization through algorithmic personalization, which creates echo chambers that limit users’ exposure to opposing viewpoints, allowing already extreme viewpoints to escalate. 

Debates on such platforms majorly revolve around disinformation and hate speech, both of which have been observed to exacerbate polarization. In recent years, global experts such as the United Nations have publicly announced their concerns for hate speech being “super-charged by the internet”, by permitting the rampant spread of falsehood and conspiracy theories which provoke offline violence.  

In cases such as Alex Pretti’s death, which are representative of the most politically-pressing matters – violations of humanitarian law and civil rights, the media’s notorious role of amplification poses serious threats to societal safety and well-being.

A Question of Regression: Is Political Marketing Reverting to Political Propaganda?

With the rise of social media’s inherent bias and unmasked role as a misinformation superspreader, as well as the public distrust fostered by privacy-breach scandals, could the modern-day practice of political marketing actually be reverting to represent the obsolete paradigm of pre-21st century political propaganda? 

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As discussed earlier, the defining characteristics of propaganda include its deliberate dissemination of biased, misleading, or false information, and intent to manipulate public opinion. To question this reversion would imply doubt towards the widely-perceived efficacious nature of societal transformation over the past century. While the digital revolution has created countless platforms that empower a free society, it has also enabled backward-looking messaging by allowing widespread bias and misinformation from untrusted sources.

Do Solutions Raise Ethicality Concerns?

Given that political marketing in a modernly, digitized world has been widely scrutinized for threatening the privacy and safety of citizens, the question stands: should national leaders or organizations enforce restrictions on the practice of political marketing, and how would such constraints ethically collide with the constitutional rights of a free society? 

The scenario of restricting information bears the concern of incomplete disclosure surrounding pressing, international issues. Any governmental intervention in preventing the spread of select media from the public is definitively unconstitutional in most states; for example, violating the First Amendment of the US Constitution, freedom of speech. 

However, where the slippery slope of ethicality is most relevant in cases of private censorship. Given that private entities (e.g. individuals, business, social media platforms) have no legal obligation to honor constitutional rights, they possess editorial discretion to set their own rules and regulate speech on their platforms or property. But who are the censors? Who is deciding what content should be pushed out versus what should be restricted? What are their political views? What is the process of these decisions, is it structured to centralize objectivity, or are these decisions based on subjective discretion of the censor? 

All of these questions are pertinent to assessing the credibility of future media if more private entities adopt these practices of legal censorship. While such solutions may provide relief to the consequences of widespread misinformation, they beget other ways to subvert consumer trust. Growing social media censorship may evoke suspicion amongst consumer bases who are aware that they are not receiving complete information, and therefore heightened distrust, potentially resulting in platform usage decline and civic uproar.  

The question remains: to what extent do we sacrifice ethicality and lean into risky policy decisions to alleviate current harm and concerns over the growingly controversial, and suppositionally regressive practice of political marketing?