Microtargeting, Dogwhistles, and Deliberative Democracy

‘Dogwhistles’ and microtargeted political advertisements are objects of widespread moral and political concern. With a few notable exceptions in the case of dogwhistles (and none in the case of microtargeting) normative criticism of these speech act types focuses on problematic content—that a dogwhistle is, for instance, racist, or a microtargeted advertisement misleading. I argue that these practices are additionally wrongful on content-neutral grounds — regardless of their content. My argument proceeds from a deliberative conception of democracy according to which only a vote which follows from an adequate deliberative process confers democratic legitimacy on its results. I claim that both dogwhistles and microtargeting threaten to prevent adequate democratic deliberation from taking place, and therefore that these practices are anti-democratic (and hence generally morally impermissible for political actors to perform). My central claim is that dogwhistles and microtargeting undermine democratic deliberation via a mechanism I label ‘information Balkanisation.’ Microtargeted ads restrict the voting public’s access to salient political information (i.e. politicians’ campaign promises/claims). Dogwhistles likewise deny the democratic body as a whole access to salient information. This ‘Balkanisation’ undermines the deliberative-democratic norm of publicity, reduces public accountability, and perhaps prevents adequate democratic deliberation from taking place. This, in turn, implies that these practices threaten the democratic legitimacy of election results and democratic mandates. I conclude that they are anti-democratic practices. Finally, I discuss two potential objections and how my argument relates to existing work.