Been spending time with the ads of @ProjectLincoln for a piece in Society's election issue. Perhaps you've found yourself wondering why Dems don't make ads like this.

A thread

In the 2020 Presidential campaign season, the conservative Lincoln Project has capitalized on the largely unregulated land of American campaign finance to create an efficient, social media driven ad machine. 2/

In tenor, content, and aesthetic, the ads of the GOP-led anti-Trump Super-PAC are distinct from those typically produced by Democratic campaigns.

With dark, ominous warnings of threats to come, hyperbolic appeals, & ad hominem attacks on Trump’s masculinity & lack of physical strength, the strategy of the Lincoln Proj illustrates the psychological traits of & messaging aesthetics preferred by social/cultural conservatives.

With high need for closure, and processing goals driven by efficiency, conservatives would likely be receptive to such threat-oriented, didactic, hyperbolic, and efficient political messaging.

Whether a reflection of the psychological inclinations of the conservatives who create the ads, or of their keen understanding of the psy of their conservative target audience, there is reason to believe that LP’s ads will resonate with...

the needs and preferences of a conservative audience, serving to reify this link between psychology and politics once again.

We know from @LilyMasonPhD's work (among others) that for the past half-century, our political identities have become increasingly linked to our social, cultural, and racial identities.

Political strategists and propagandists have learned make use of these salient (and primal) group identities to help create and disseminate messages carrying our preferred themes and content through our preferred messaging aesthetic.

And social media’s microtargeting capabilities make all this possible. @ProjectLincoln's @TheRickWilson described “the hellscape that is Facebook” as “…the most meaningful tool of political manipulation ever devised in the history of all mankind..."

Wilson continued (in this interview: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/rick-wilson-on-how-the-lincoln-project-gets-in-trumps-head.html)

The Lincoln Project illustrates the next iteration of message-matching in strategic political communication: matching message content, style, & packaging to the political, cultural, and psychological predispositions of individuals to maximize emotional responses & mobilization.

To do this requires a mastery of both the psychology of your target audience and the tools at your disposal.

So, the reason that Democratic strategists haven’t made these same visceral attack ads against Trump?

It’s not because they don’t have the same targeting toolbox.

It’s because they’re not Republicans.

And, if you want to understand how and why micro-targeting of political ads on Facebook is a bad thing if left opaque and unchecked, check out this from @shannimcg and me from Feb https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/14/mass-propaganda-used-be-difficult-facebook-made-it-easy/