Game of Thrones: imagined World Combines Romantic and Grotesque Visions of Middle Ages

Winter's coming (HBO)

Take the dragons and the zombies away from the television adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s epic A Song of Ice and Fire novels and you are left with the seemingly authentic portrayal of a pseudo-medieval world. Indeed, Martin was inspired by historical events such as the Wars of the Roses, the Crusades and the Hundred Years’ War.

It is no surprise that Game of Thrones is being used to stimulate interest in medieval studies. Westeros is replete with medieval staples such as knights, queens, broadswords and castles. It’s packed with recognisable medieval characters, including Machiavellian schemers, brutal warriors, noble heroes, paternalistic lords and power-hungry aristocrats.

Of course Game of Thrones is fundamentally ahistorical, taking inspiration from popular myths about many different periods and places. But while it illuminates little about the past, it reveals much about how we imagine that past.

The grotesque
Medieval scholar David Matthews suggests that modern views of the Middle Ages can be categorised as either romantic or grotesque. Game of Thrones features both elements in spades.

The likes of vicious, spoiled king Joffrey Baratheon, his scheming mother Cersei Lannister and psychopathic warlord Ramsey Bolton signify the grotesque. They represent the idea of the Middle Ages as a violent and lawless era. That notion was created by the literati of Renaissance Italy as they sought to rediscover the learning and culture of ancient Greece and Rome. Such views were reinforced by the Reformation, which equated Catholicism with medieval folly.

These attitudes were strengthened during the 18th-century Enlightenment. The “light” of modern reason and objectivity was contrasted against the superstitious “darkness” that had supposedly characterised the medieval period. In this way, the Middle Ages became a foil against which to measure the achievements of modernity.

If the Middle Ages have become a shorthand for brutality, they can also highlight the supposed inadequacies of non-Western societies. Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, it has become routine among Western officials and journalists to label Islamic extremists as “medieval”. In 2015, US Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina even claimed that her degree in medieval history would help her fight Islamic State.

Such attitudes can be identified in Game of Thrones. The brown-skinned slave-trading Dothraki are portrayed as a Mongol-esque horde whose primary characteristic is primitive savagery. Daenerys Targaryen, a claimant to the throne of Westeros who liberates thousands from servitude in the neighbouring continent of Essos, is portrayed as a white saviour bringing freedom to oriental slaves.

Mother of dragons, liberator of slaves: Daenerys Targaryen. (HBO)

Meanwhile in Westeros, where the central story unfolds, slavery was outlawed centuries ago. The underlying assumption here is that societies progress towards civilisation over time. The imagined land of Westeros borrows much from an earlier period in Western development. But the eastern continent of Essos is home to societies bearing cultural hallmarks aligning them with the Middle and Far East. Some of them are presented as more refined than their Western counterparts, but also more amoral, thus echoing Western views of the east that have been powerful in our own world since the Crusades.

The romantic
There is also much to admire in the protagonists we root for. Daenerys, the heroic Jon Snow and the honourable and doomed Ned Stark are examples of the “romantic” Middle Ages. They are brave, honourable, noble and just, sitting within a vision of the medieval past informed by ideas about chivalry and morality.

Such figures hark back to older views of the Middle Ages as a heroic age in which individuals could make their own moral choices. Think of T. H. White’s Arthur, Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, and the numerous retellings of the Robin Hood legend. Looking further back, we see these same tropes in Thomas Mallory’s Arthurian romances, themselves composed at the very end of the medieval era.

In all cases the main characters champion the oppressed and challenge established authorities which lack moral legitimacy, just like our heroes in Game of Thrones.

But the aristocratic status of the Starks and Targaryens also represents social order and cohesion. These rival families do not seek to tear down the existing hierarchy in Westeros, but rather to remodel it along more just and benevolent lines. This tallies with an image of the Middle Ages as a golden era of stability, when everyone knew their role and had clearly defined responsibilities towards one another. For 19th-century thinkers, including John Ruskin and William Morris, the medieval period was a model through which humanity might from escape from the cruel vicissitudes of industrial capitalism.

Character development: Arya Stark. (HBO)

Yet the powerful women in Game of Thrones are indisputably modern. Daenerys, Cersei Lannister and Arya Stark, who has grown from tomboyish daughter to deadly assassin, are symbols of feminist empowerment, taking on roles traditionally reserved for men. Interestingly, the only character truly adhering to knightly ideals is Brienne of Tarth, who dresses and behaves like a knight but cannot actually be one, because of her gender.

That said, the degradation and abuse that many female characters endure – which sparked accusations of misogyny – is of course grotesque rather than romantic.

Achieving balance
What Game of Thrones does so well is balance these elements. Too much violence and many fans would turn off in disgust. Too much high-minded moralising and the show would feel sanitised and lacking a genuine sense of peril. Perhaps that is why the adventures of characters such as Arya, Cersei’s brother Jaime Lannister, their enforcer Sandor Clegane and above all the charming and Machiavellian Tyrion Lannister make for such compelling viewing. They operate in the borderlands between the “grotesque” and the “romantic”, making them admirable and repugnant in equal measure.

Tyrion Lannister: scheming, charming, charismatic. (HBO)

More broadly, the series tells us something about how its audience may feel about society today. Most of us are glad to have advanced beyond the barbarism we associate with the Middle Ages. But many also feel that values of duty and social responsibility have been lost along the way.

How we conceptualise the present is inevitably influenced by how we imagine the past. In terms of selling a story, therefore, the accuracy or otherwise of the medieval vision that Game of Thrones presents is irrelevant.

About Today's Contributor:
Richard Marsden, Lecturer in History, The Open University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

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#BepiColombo: Europe Blasts Off To Mercury – Here's The Rocket Science

BepiColombo MPO at Mercury (Spacecraft ESA, Mercury NASA, Author provided)

The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched its BepiColombo mission to the planet Mercury from its spaceport near the equator in Kourou, French Guyana, on October 20. My involvement in the mission means that I will be anxiously following the journey as the spacecraft carries out a series of tricky manoeuvres, culminating in its final approach to Mercury in 2025.

The mission comes 25 years after a group of scientists first proposed to ESA that it should send a probe to Mercury, and 18 years after ESA approved the project as a “cornerstone” mission. This is the category of world class, scientifically excellent missions needing significant new technology development. Previous ESA cornerstone missions include the Rosetta comet mission and the LISA Pathfinder gravitational wave observatory.

But why Mercury? It is a puzzling planet. NASA’s MESSENGER orbiter (2011-2015) revealed many reasons why scientists are keen to learn more about it. These include the planet’s abnormally large core – we don’t know why it is still molten and able to generate a magnetic field, unlike that of Mars or Venus. Another mystery is the abundance of (largely unidentified) volatile substances at its surface. These ought not to have been incorporated in a planet that formed so close to the sun as Mercury now is.

The rocket science 
BepiColombo’s initial course after three days of orbiting the Earth for checkouts will be an elliptical orbit about the sun. This will begin by taking it inside the Earth’s orbit. But early in 2019, it will cross outside it for most of the year. It will then move back inside before coming very close to the Earth in April 2020.

BepiColombo launch and separation timeline. (ESA)

At that time it will make a “gravity-assist” flyby – using the Earth’s gravity to swing itself inwards towards Venus. There will also be a gravity-assist flyby of Venus when it gets there in 2020, followed by yet another in 2021 to send it towards Mercury. Then, there will be a series of six similar flybys of Mercury in 2021-2025, needed to ensure that the spacecraft eventually closes in on its target at a slow enough speed to be captured into orbit around it in December 2025.

Each flyby, shown in the animation above, has to be executed perfectly. Things could go wrong, especially during the launch, but I have ample confidence in the abilities of ESA’s flight control team at Darmstadt, Germany.

Stacked spacecraft 
The mission, which is named in memory of Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo who first proposed gravity-assist flybys for spacecraft, is a joint venture between ESA and its Japanese counterpart, JAXA.

The stacked spacecraft carries two orbiters. ESA’s is a two-metre long unit, massing more than a tonne, referred to as the Mercury Planetary Orbiter, MPO. I suspect that after it begins to orbit Mercury, it will inherit the name of BepiColombo or maybe just Bepi. The Japanese orbiter is smaller, and its mass is about a quarter of ESA’s orbiter. Originally called the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, MMO, in June it was awarded the name Mio, which in Japanese carries connotations of safe navigation. During the cruise to Mercury, Mio will be housed inside a sunshield and attached to one side of the European orbiter.

Artist’s impression of BepiColombo during its April 2020 Earth flyby. Mio can be seen nestled inside its sunshield. (ESA/ATG medialab)

On the other side of the orbiter is the Mercury Transfer Module, MTM. This is operated by ESA, and provides the propulsion to take the stacked spacecraft all the way to its Mercury orbit. It has a 7.5-metre long “wing” of solar panels, whose job is to turn sunlight into electricity to power its “ion drive”. This is a propulsion device that creates thrust by accelerating xenon gas that has been positively charged (by stripping its atoms of electrons). This technique can provide much more thrust per mass of fuel than conventional chemical rockets.

The sun’s enormous gravity means that more energy is needed to get into a stable orbit about Mercury than would be needed to send the same spacecraft to vastly more distant Pluto. Because of this, the ion drive will be operated at intervals amounting to about half the cruise duration, mostly to slow the spacecraft down.

Unfortunately, the stacked configuration of the combined spacecraft impedes its ability to do science during the planetary flybys. Some scientific data will be collected, but the best pictures we are likely to get during flybys will be from the selfie-cams mounted on the MTM.

Arriving at Mercury 
On arrival at Mercury in late December 2025, the transfer module will be detached. Mio, spinning at 15 revolutions per minute for stability, will then be liberated into a strongly elliptical orbit about Mercury. As soon as this happens, JAXA will take over Mio operations and guide it through its tasks studying the planet’s magnetic field and the associated space environment.

ESA’s orbiter will then jettison the sunshield, its last impediment, and use its own chemical thrusters to achieve a closer, more circular, orbit about Mercury. From there it will study the planet’s surface by using an assortment of cameras and other instruments. This should pin down the composition and geological history in much better detail than the smaller and less complex MESSENGER. The orbiter will also carry a magnetometer so that both it and Mio will be able to report magnetic conditions at two places simultaneously – an important first for a deep space mission that should teach us about the speed at which disturbances travel through the planet’s magnetic field.

It’s exciting to think that BebiColombo may transform our knowledge of Mercury in just a few years. And while you wait, from October 23, you will be able to listen to some beautiful, evocative music that the planet has inspired as part of the Planets 2018 project. This was set up to commemorate the centenary of Gustav Holst’s Planets Suite with music inspired by the science of the planets.

About Today's Contributor:
David Rothery, Professor of Planetary Geosciences, The Open University

• David Rothery is co-leader of the European Space Agency's Mercury Surface and Composition Working Group, and a Co-Investigator on MIXS (Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer). 
• He has received funding from the UK Space Agency and the Science & Technology Facilities Council for work related to Mercury and the European Space Agency's Mercury orbiter BepiColombo, and is currently funded by the European Commission under its Horizon 2020 programme for work on planetary geological mapping (776276 Planmap). 
• He is author of Planet Mercury - from Pale Pink Dot to Dynamic World (Springer, 2015), Moons: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Planets: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2010). 
• He is Educator on the Open University's free learning Badged Open Course (BOC) on Moons and its equivalent Future Learn Moons MOOC, and chair of the Open University's level 2 course on Planetary Science and the Search for Life.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Bonus Video:

Malala Fund and Tech Startup Build Free Fundraising Technology for Nonprofits

Nobel laureate, Malala Yousafzai

Malala Fund—a nonprofit organization co-founded by Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai that advocates globally for girls' education—teamed up with tech startup Give Lively to build "Simple Widget", a new state-of-the-art donation widget that provides an elevated donation experience nonprofits can take advantage of directly on their own websites. Simple Widget is now available for free to 501(c)(3) organizations. 

Successful fundraising through digital platforms has become critical for most nonprofits, but especially for organizations like Malala Fund whose supporters primarily interact with them online. "We wanted to give particular focus to enhancing and streamlining the donor experience," explains Hannah Orenstein, Digital Manager at Malala Fund. "As soon as supporters learn about our mission and are compelled to give, it's important that they are able to do so as quickly, easily and as securely as possible."

Give Lively is a philanthropist-funded startup in New York City that is disrupting the nonprofit space by building innovative fundraising tech and giving it away to nonprofits for free. "We loved that the Give Lively team was nonprofit driven and not necessarily 'business' driven," says Orenstein.

"Malala Fund's digital team came to us with an idea to improve their donor experience and we knew we could build something that would have a broader impact," explains Brooke Currence, Vice President of Marketing at Give Lively, noting that effective fundraising tech was critical for Malala Fund but also for the entire nonprofit sector. "This collaboration led to a solution that will ultimately help nonprofits of all sizes raise funding they need to fulfill their mission without sacrificing their means."

Simple Widget is built with mobile-first design and features like Apple Pay and Google Pay which allow donors to get through the donation process as seamlessly as possible by reducing payment to a single tap. Nonprofits can customize Simple Widget to fit their brand and easily embed onto their websites. Simple Widget is now added to Give Lively's suite of always-free fundraising products, technology that is otherwise prohibitively expensive for most nonprofits.

⏩ Visit www.malala.org to see the technology in action.

Give Lively's Simple Widget on Malala Fund's website is built with mobile-first design and features that allow donors to get through the donation process as seamlessly as possible.

About Give Lively:

Give Lively is a New York City tech startup disrupting the nonprofit online fundraising space by building innovative fundraising tech and giving it away to nonprofits for free. Give Lively's philanthropist founders cover their operating costs so they can build best-in-class tech to empower nonprofits to raise more online. 

Nonprofits have unlimited access to Give Lively's Forever Free and always evolving fundraising tech, like Text-to-Donate, Peer-to-Peer, Embeddable Widgets, Event Ticketing, Video Storytelling and more. Thousands of nonprofits rely on Give Lively technology to fundraise. 

To learn more, visit www.givelively.org.

SOURCE: Give Lively

Related Video:

New Book by Paul Orwell Compares Back to the Future Bully Biff Tannen to President Trump

"Sad! Donald 'Biff' Trump is President" - Front Cover

A new book from Oceania Press will be released on Back To The Future Day – this Sunday October 21st – which ponders whether Donald Trump, or perhaps The Russian Government, used a time-travelling DeLorean to influence the 2016 Presidential Election.  Debate performances, punchlines and information leaks could have been tweaked after-the-fact to cause the upset win.

The book compares the character of bully Biff Tannen from Back to the Future II to President Trump (referred to as "Biff" Trump in this book) who share physical characteristics (hair, height) as well as the number of wives, a similar business history, and belligerent personalities.

The book's conclusion is that time travel is fanciful but the comparison between the two men is not.  While Biff Tannen did use time travel in Back to the Future II, it was thick skin, stubborn persistence and showmanship that put Donald 'Biff' Trump into the White House.

Author Paul Orwell draws striking similarities between Biff Tannen and "Biff" Trump and bemoans "the transition from issue politics to 'death by tweet.'"  "We shouldn't have to wake up and wonder who the president is going to bully today," he adds.

The book is critical of Trump but not of Republican politics, and loaded with scene and theme references from the beloved movie series. It discusses why Trump's message resonated with small-town America (Hill Valley, in the movie series).

Donald Trump on women: "You have to treat 'em like s**t"

Trump's well-known quote about women (spoken to friend Philip Johnson, according to New York Magazine) and the other various allegations of Trump's interpersonal misbehavior are compared in the book to the behavior of Biff Tannen, who sexually assaults Lorraine McFly in Back To The Future I and mistreats her in Back to the Future II.  

⏩ The book asks the question: why do we tolerate this behavior from a President when we cannot tolerate it from a movie character?

There are also chapters on President Obama's humiliation of Trump at the White House Correspondent's dinner in April 2011, and how President Pence would be a very different President.

⏩ "Sad! Donald 'Biff' Trump is President" is available as a book and ebook from Amazon.com on Back To The Future Day, October 21st, the day Marty traveled in time in the movie series.

• Back to the Future is the 14th highest grossing (US) movie trilogy of all time and it stars one of the most famous bully characters - Biff Tannen - in movie history.  

• Screenwriter/producer Bob Gale is on the record (Daily Beast, October 21st, 2015) as saying that the character of Biff Tannen in Back to the Future II was based on the Donald Trump of the late 1980's.

"Sad! Donald 'Biff' Trump is President" - Title Block

About Paul Orwell:

Paul Orwell is the pen name for a businessman who admits to benefiting from Republican tax cuts. He's an immigrant, but the kind the US President currently welcomes to the country. Orwell has lived in London, New York, Moscow and Washington DC, and yearns for an era where political conversation and bi-partisan compromise are possible.

SOURCE: Oceania Press

Confirmed! Ben Affleck Will Join Star-Studded Lineup at San Antonio's Inaugural Celebrity Fan Fest

Academy Award Winner Ben Affleck Joins Star-Studded Lineup at San Antonio’s Inaugural Celebrity Fan Fest (Photo Credit: William Morris Endeavor (WME)/ DC Entertainment)

San Antonio-based entertainment company, PMX Events, is thrilled to announce that Ben Affleck will officially join their celebrity lineup at the launch of its inaugural Celebrity Fan Fest, a two-day interactive fan festival. 

The event will feature celebrity appearances, photo ops, celebrity panels, special attractions and more on November 10 and 11 at the JW Marriot Hill Country Resort Hotel in San Antonio, Texas.

Ben Affleck will be joining fellow "Justice League" cast members Jason Momoa, who will be starring in the upcoming holiday blockbuster movie, "Aquaman," and Ray Fisher. 

Fisher was most recently seen as Victor Stone (aka Cyborg) in "Justice League and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice." 

Other notable guest appearances include, "Stargate: Atlantis" stars Joe Flanigan (Major/Lt. Colonel John Sheppard) and Jewel Staite (Dr. Jennifer Keller), CW Network's "iZombie" stars David Anders (Blaine DeBeers) and Aly Michalka (Peyton Charles).

Ben Affleck (Batman/Bruce Wayne)

"Over the span of several decades in the entertainment industry, Director, Actor, Writer, Producer and Philanthropist Ben Affleck has had notable performances, reprising the iconic role of Batman in three feature films and top acting credits in "Pearl Harbor," "Hollywoodland," "The Accountant" and "Armageddon," said PMX Events President Bob Wills. "Affleck is currently working on a new crime-drama film, "Triple Frontier," alongside actors Charlie Hunnam, Oscar Isaac and Garrett Hedlund. We couldn't be more excited to welcome him to Celebrity Fan Fest and offer his many fans the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet him in-person on Sunday, November 11."

What is truly unique about Celebrity Fan Fest will be its format. There will be a limited number of available tickets for celebrity photo opportunities and VIP panels so that attending fans can fully enjoy this totally immersive event.

Ray Fisher/Victor Stone/Cyborg (Image via pmxevents.com)

About Celebrity Fan Fest:

Based in San Antonio, Texas, Celebrity Fan Fest is a two-day interactive fan festival featuring special appearances by prominent film and television celebrities. 

The "fan festival experience" offers an elevated immersive form of entertainment including celebrity meet and greet opportunities, "Vendor Village", special performances by the stars, plus much more. 

The event will lead up to the 2019 Celebrity Movie Con also produced by PMX Events.

About PMX Events:

PMX Events specializes in creating one-of-a-kind productions including comic conventions, movie and music festivals, family shows, non-profit fundraising events as well as foodie experiences.  

For more information about PMX events please visit, pmxevents.com.

Jason Momoa/Aquaman (Image via pmxevents.com)

⏩Tickets for Celebrity Fan Fest are available for purchase online only at pmxevents.com. Event doors will open at 9:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 10 and 10:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. on Sunday, November 11.

SOURCE: PMX Events

Bonus Pictures:

Joe Flanigan: Major/Lt. Colonel John Sheppard in "Stargate: Atlantis" (Image via pmxevents.com)

Jewel Staite: Dr. Jennifer Keller in "Stargate: Atlantis" (Image via pmxevents.com)

US: Three Generations "Fearful" About Future of Democracy

AARP and Association for Young Americans Three Generations Survey

New survey results find that a strong majority of Americans from three generations say the country is headed in the wrong direction and say they are "fearful" about the future of democracy in America. 

The poll from AARP and the Association for Young Americans (AYA) also found that Millennials, Generation X and Baby Boomers agree that the top issue facing the country is "honesty in government."

AARP and Association for Young Americans Three Generations Survey

The national survey of 4,862 adults representing three generations comes just weeks before the pivotal midterm elections when control of Congress and governorships in three dozen states are up for grabs. AARP has been mounting a major campaign called "Be the Difference. Vote," which is designed to drive voters to the polls on Election Day.

"These poll results show how concerned all Americans are with the current state of politics," said AARP's Executive Vice President Nancy LeaMond. "With the midterm elections just a few weeks away, voters will have the opportunity to hold candidates accountable and make them pay attention to the issues that matter to them and their families. People need to realize that their vote counts."

AARP and Association for Young Americans Three Generations Survey

Overall, 64 percent of those surveyed said the country is headed in the "wrong direction" and 62 percent said they are "fearful about the future of democracy in America." 

When asked to rank the importance of 18 issues facing the country, the No. 1 issue selected by each of the three generations was the same: honesty in government. It was ranked ahead of jobs, health care and access to education.

AARP and Association for Young Americans Three Generations Survey

While midterm elections often see low turnout, the AARP/AYA Three Generations poll found that strong majorities from across the age spectrum are planning to go to the polls on Nov. 6. Overall, 70 percent of those surveyed said they were "very likely" to vote in the midterm elections, including 55 percent of Millennials, 70 percent of Gen Xers and 83 percent of Baby Boomers.

Ben Brown, Founder of AYA, said, "We want Americans to really understand that their votes count. Association of Young Americans particularly wants to see more Millennials vote, but not just be politically active on Election Day, but every day, because the data shows that they're fearful for our democracy and find honesty in government the number one issue."  

The survey was the third in a series from AARP and AYA on a wide variety of issues facing Americans. Earlier results found shared concern across the generations about the level of student loan debt and anxiety about finances in the future. These survey results do not necessarily reflect the policy positions of AYA or AARP.

AARP's "Be the Difference. Vote" campaign is designed to encourage Americans to make their voices heard at the ballot box this fall. 

For more information on AARP's "Be The Difference. Vote" campaign and to pledge to vote in this year's elections, go to aarp.org/vote.

"Be The Difference. Vote"

⏩ The poll was conducted by NORC's AmeriSpeak nationally representative online panel for AARP from July 10, 2018 to August 7, 2018, with 4,862 adults between the ages of 18 to 74 encompassing Millennial, Generation X, and Baby Boomer adults. 

• The margin of error is +/- 2.01 percent at the 95 percent confidence level. 
• The sample includes nationally representative samples of African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans.

 SOURCE: AARP

Google, Facebook, and Twitter Release Data on Political Ads (More or Less)

When it Comes to Political Ads, President Trump, Texas Senate Candidate Beto O'Rourke, and Senate Republican PAC are Big Spenders (Image via LoupDargent.info)

Using cutting-edge machine learning and data scraping tools, computer scientists at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering today released the first database and analysis of political advertising based on more than 884,000 ads identified by Google, Twitter, and Facebook.

The team launched their user-friendly Online Political Ads Transparency Project in July with data from Facebook, which was the first company to provide it. But the researchers were forced to switch techniques when Facebook blocked their data collection two weeks later. 

⏩ Today's report is the first to include not only Facebook (including Instagram), but also data newly shared by Twitter and Google.

Although they found numerous roadblocks to meaningful transparency – ranging from faulty archives constructed in haste by the social media giants to varying definitions of "political advertising" and throttling of data collection by Facebook – NYU Tandon Computer Science and Engineering Assistant Professor Damon McCoy and his team nonetheless reported meaningful insights:

• President Donald Trump and his PAC registered the largest number of ads of any candidate, due in large part to the preponderance of small, micro-targeted advertising. Virtually all were aimed at raising funds during the study period, September 9-22, 2018. The researchers found similar dominance by President Trump in their initial, Facebook-only, analysis. 
                                                 
• The Democratic candidate for Senate from Texas, Beto O'Rourke, continued to be the apparent largest spender, mostly seeking small donations from outside his state via Facebook and Twitter. Although O'Rourke was the rare federal candidate unaffiliated with a PAC, he was like other candidates in using social media to raise funds outside their districts, McCoy noted.    
                                              
• The Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican Super PAC, was the largest spender on Google and across all three platforms combined.
                                        
• Priorities USA, a left-leaning PAC, was among the big spenders, but exact figures are not available because it collaborated on ad placements with other PACs. 
       
• Left-leaning organizations are the big spenders on Facebook and Twitter; on Google, the trend is reversed. 
                                                    
• Facebook apparently carries the most political ads, but Google apparently ranks higher in impressions and spending. This is due, in part, to the large number of small, micro-targeted ads on Facebook (60 percent) and because the majority of spending on Google (61 percent) is by PACs, which are more like to have large budgets. But analysis is muddied by the fact that both Google and Facebook disclose only ranges; only Twitter discloses exact spending and impressions. Each of the giants also defines "political advertising" differently. For example, Facebook alone includes non-media for-profit companies promoting slanted political content, companies selling merchandise with political messages, and solar panel firms with environmental messages. Google and Twitter, meanwhile, limited their reporting to only federal candidates, at least initially. 
                                                    
• PACs accounted for 23 percent of the spending on Facebook during the study period. 
                                                 
• The very top spenders during the study period on Facebook, though, were Facebook itself and its own Instagram – Facebook to publicize its responses to Russian election hacking and Instagram to spread a get-out-the-vote message. But the researchers pointed out that the company seemed to overcharge itself, based upon impressions.

Ads that appeared on Facebook and Twitter were more often left-leaning and those on Google right-leaning during the study period. (Image via NYU Tandon School of Engineering)

Collaborators on the Online Political Ads Transparency Project are NYU Tandon doctoral student Laura Edelson, NYU Shanghai visiting undergraduate student Shikhar Sakhuja, and Ratan Dey, a former NYU doctoral student studying under Professor Keith Ross and now an assistant professor of practice in computer science at NYU Shanghai.

McCoy conceived the project to build easy-to-use tools to collect, archive, and analyze political advertising data. Although Facebook became the first major social media company to launch a searchable archive of political advertising, for both Facebook and Instagram, in May 2018, McCoy found the archive difficult to use, requiring time-consuming manual searches. He decided to apply versions of the data scraping techniques he had previously used against criminals, including human traffickers who advertised and used Bitcoin.

Despite the difficulty the team subsequently encountered accessing Facebook data, they report it has by far the most comprehensive political archive among the three social media companies. The report outlines problems with the API – an interface with other platforms – introduced in beta form by Facebook to allow researchers access to its archives.

Google's data is the easiest for the public to access, as a BigQuery dataset, available in its entirety via the Google Cloud service. But it is updated in real time, with no archiving, so the NYU researchers are capturing the data daily, to share and archive.

Twitter has no easily accessible political ad archive, so the NYU research team is scraping all political advertising data identified by Twitter and sharing and archiving for the public, as well.

Although the researchers used the September period for comparison purposes, they have now compiled data from late May through October 3, with a gap of about six weeks while Facebook blocked its data scraping. 

⏩ They praised the social media companies for implementing fixes they recommended and continue to work toward transparency.

NYU Tandon School of Engineering Logo (PRNewsFoto/NYU Tandon School of Engineering)

The work was funded in part by the National Science Foundation under a grant to McCoy for research that explores bias and the manipulation of online data.

Visit the project and download data at: online-pol-ads.github.io.

SOURCE: NYU Tandon School of Engineering