The challenges of Big Data

The power of Big Data in elections is not confined to India, in the US, the 2012 Obama campaign famously used Big Data to revolutionize political campaigning

In a democracy, Big Data is emerging as the invisible hand that shapes political narratives and predicts outcomes with a precision that was once the domain of oracles. This was evident in the recent elections when political parties wielded it to orchestrate their strategies and campaigns. But this column is not about politics, rather it is about how Big Data is deployed, what it does to us, and whether we should be concerned by how it’s used.

(Representative Photo)

But first, what exactly is Big Data? Imagine an ocean with countless points of information that contains voter preferences, social media interactions, and demographic details. Political parties cast their nets to analyse, understand and predict voter behaviour. All this morphs into campaign strategies. The ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), for example, is a master at this and stormed into power back in 2014 by leveraging Big Data to craft highly targeted campaigns. The Congress party latched on to it much later. The power of Big Data in elections is not confined to India, in the United States, the 2012 Obama campaign famously used Big Data to revolutionize political campaigning.

Another significant aspect of Big Data’s role in the recent elections was sentiment analysis from social media feeds. Platforms like X, Facebook, and WhatsApp have become critical battlegrounds for shaping public opinion. By analysing the sentiment of millions of social media posts, political parties could gauge the public mood in real-time and adjust strategies dynamically. If a particular policy announcement generated negative reactions, swift corrective measures could be taken to mitigate any potential backlash. This ability to adapt on the fly is reminiscent of a chess grandmaster recalculating strategies several moves ahead after each opponent’s turn.

While this sounds great, the problem with how Big Data is used is that it’s not just political parties but pretty much any entity that can deploy it to manipulate behaviour and violate privacy. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is a cautionary tale, where personal data harvested from Facebook was used to influence the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US Presidential election. This highlighted how data, when mishandled, could undermine democratic processes.

This is why we need data protection laws. The good news is that a law is on its way. Much work has gone into the Digital Data Protection Bill (DPDP). Shwetashree Majumder, Managing Partner at Fidus Law Chambers, thinks it’s only a matter of time before it is implemented. “The DPDP Act was published in the Gazette of India after Presidential Assent on 11th August 2023. However, it is yet to come into force as the rules are yet to be notified and much of the Act is delegated to the rules.”

She adds, “The central government also has to appoint the chairperson and members of The Data Protection Board of India under the Act. The expectation was that this would be done by July 2024, but I suspect that it may get pushed by another month or two.”

However, people such as Venkatesh Hariharan, a Bengaluru-based public policy analyst, don’t sound gung-ho about the Bill. “With the DPDP Act, with AI and with Big Data, the key question is how well will the government protect an individual’s privacy. The individual is called a ‘Data Principal’ in the DPDP Act. If individuals have meaningful agency, choice and control over their data, the term becomes meaningful. However, if individuals do not have agency, then we are mere ‘Data Subjects,” he says.

Very simply put, a principal is someone who owns the data wholly while a subject is a person who does not have complete control over it. When asked to explain where his pessimism comes from, he says the government’s intent and ability to enforce laws are weak. He goes on to describe his pessimism, “Technology will keep evolving. But will the law keep pace as well? For example, on social media, so many women get rape threats, and there is so much hate speech, but zero enforcement.”

But hope, we must. If data is indeed the new oil, then it must be extracted like oil, refined, and used responsibly. Only then can it power the engines of democracy and development.