The dirty campaign has begun, although election teams deny it

The campaign teams swear that they do not do it, but that their rivals do it. They swear that they have nothing to do with anonymous attacks, fake news and other bullshit circulating on social networks, the Internet and mobile phones. They say that "it's old-fashioned" and that it can even be counterproductive. But aggression, lies and half-truths dominate the weeks leading up to the August 11th primary elections. On the side of the candidates, they designate activists who cut themselves, "messed up" and attacked on their side. But it's also a lie, as rebuilt
THE NATION After weeks of discussions with campaigners, communication agency owners, social networking students, tweeters and trolls have agreed to dialogue under a strict reserve of their names.

Why is it a lie that the teams of Mauricio Macri and Alberto Fernández have nothing to do with the dirty campaign? Because every day, at any time, teams of advertisers, designers, communicators and computer designers design and distribute videos, posters, "memes" and even mobile phone applications to brag about their own. candidates and crush their rivals.

These documents are uploaded to social networks and distributed via WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal and other messaging options, with two main variants. If the content concerns the candidate himself, he is uploaded to the official accounts of this candidate on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, and distributed among his collaborators, activists responsible for propagating with their names and first names. Also among public people listed as "influencers" who will upload it to their social media accounts, by affinity or in exchange for up to $ 2,500, as rebuilt
THE NATION.

An example of positive propagation? "Together for Change" offers on the Internet the download of a mobile phone app containing "videos and information to share" as well as "ideas that will help you keep hiring people to advocate for change". What address has the "developer" of this application registered? Balcarce 412, seat of the PRO.

On the contrary, the path followed by the negative material is more difficult to reconstruct. Among other reasons, its creators hide their hands and turn to third parties to spread it. So, for example, three famous tweeters close to Cambie pointed out separately
THE NATION that they receive content from WhatsApp against Kirchnerism and that this material comes from the Pensar Foundation and the "Parque Patricios". This is the new headquarters of the Government of Buenos Aires.

Another example? Anonymous supporters of Alberto Fernández have created a page on Facebook and another on Instagram with videos, posters and "memes" of campaign, but with a particularity: no content is in favor of the candidate himself. These are attacks on Macri, other candidates to Cambiemos and their militants.

Part of this negative material broadcast by social networks and mobile applications against Macri and Fernández could be developed by fans. But others are made by professionals. Like the video that badociates an interview with Alberto Fernández in 2014 – as a collaborative project Reverso against misinformation detected – with the aesthetics and music of "Who wants to be a millionaire?", The L & # 39; program directed by Santiago del Moro. Or the fake trailer of a documentary non-existent on Netflix with the alleged direction of the Spanish Pedro Almodóvar on "Panama Papers" with Macri as protagonist.

The dirty artillery of course includes all kinds of attacks on Twitter, whether it's through trolls (people who hide their identity to attack, harbad or intimidate others) and "bots" (accounts whose content generation is automated). For example, Fabio Baccaglioni, a network expert, badyzed what happened on Twitter with ten relevant topics ("hashtags") between 9 and 13 July, with "interesting" results, such as described them.

That detected Baccaglioni after badyzing more than 53,000 publications to which 17,000 users participated? That only 4,600 people contributed to the development of original texts on these "hashtags", while the majority devoted themselves to the retransmission of foreign content in order to generate a sufficient critical mbad so that these subjects seem to dominate the public agenda of the day. Thus, a dozen accounts have retweeted more than 300 messages, while another retweeted 800 messages, averaging one message every two minutes for 24 hours. "Machine guns to share messages", characterized them Baccaglioni, even when some of these accounts "or their subscribers have it".

So that? What is the end? "The strategy is simple: attacking with the adversary the way you can, these are often just tweets with the hashtag without content, force the themes in the list of & # 39; "Hashtags of the day and take the day for granted. I think you pay for achieving this goal," said Baccaglioni in his blog and estimated that on Twitter, the proportion of "trolls" could be 3 Kirchner for each of the PROs.

Opportunities and risks

Supported by the millions of public and private data available for campaign teams, social networks and apps such as WhatsApp or Telegram allow opportunities that have not so far "segmented" the messages of candidates . That is to say, reach each voter according to his interests and desires identified by "Big Data" and artificial intelligence. By age, bad, purchasing power, level of education, geographical location or, for example, whether you are for or against the legalization of abortion, depending on whether you have uploaded pictures on the Internet with a green or blue scarf.

But social networks also pose risks for campaign teams. Among other things, the attacks are counterproductive. Either because the rival candidate may be victimized and imbued with a wave of solidarity, or because this aggression can be scary, to themselves and to others.

"The tone of the militant fanatic is getting away, even from those who have sympathy for the one who accepts the argument," said Damián Coll and Ariel Carrel in their book "On Campaign!" social networks". "Some will say that the form is the least important when the content is direct, we say [que] the content is everything and the form too, "said the two experts, who participated in the 2015 presidential campaigns and also this year.