Why you’re getting so many political text messages right now

People holding smartphones in their hands. The focus of the image is on the hands holding the smartphones. Only one person's face appears and it is blurred.

Text messages and emails from political campaigns are pouring into Americans’ phones and inboxes right now. This is because campaign operatives believe that the more messages they send, the greater the odds that you will act. Each time you act, the campaign gets insight on what types of messages seem to work with you. They’ll learn from your responses, and send you more messages, in the hopes you’ll stay involved and that they can eventually secure your vote.

An Introduction to the Illuminating Project

Screenshot of the Illuminating 2020 Dashboard.

Illuminating is a computational journalism project that empowers journalists covering US political campaigns. The Illuminating data helps journalists see patterns and changes in how candidates address communicate to voters over time. If candidates are spending millions of dollars to micro-target voters on digital media, then someone needs to improve transparency and hold them accountable, explains Dr. Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Principal Investigator of the project.