Private Voting, Public Opinion and Political Uncertainty in the Age of Social Media

Abstract

Abstract Before the advent of social media and big data analytics, the right to vote under conditions of ballot secrecy ensured a complementary relationship between the privacy of the voting act and political self-observation as a second-order observation in democratic political systems. Key to this relationship is the notion of public opinion. This notion and its relevance for professional political actors in dealing with political uncertainty are at stake in the age of social media. The privacy of the voting act becomes a problem once it is believed to be subject to the overriding influence of algorithmic recommendation and targeted advertising.