DOMINOES Glossary

A famous case surrounding a consulting company that specialized in using data   science methodologies to support political campaigns. The company declared bankruptcy in 2018 following legal and political fallout from its use of personal data   obtained from roughly 90 million Facebook users. In 2018, the company became  the subject of widespread criticism following reports that it purchased data  from a British academic concerning the personal psychological profile of   roughly 270,000 Facebook users. Due to the terms and conditions of the   Facebook platform at that time, the company was able to indirectly access data from the Facebook friends of those users.6 In this manner, Cambridge Analytica was able to access a far larger pool of data concerning 87 million users—without the knowledge or consent of almost any of them. Cambridge Analytica was able to use the data points it collected to build models that allowed psychological profiling of the variety of users, including the political affinities of the user, whether they were extroverts or introverts, and how they would react to certain campaigns. Using these profile-based models, the company managed to run different campaigns suitable for different   kinds of users, which allegedly influenced election choices.

A chatbot or chatterbot is a software application used to conduct an online chat conversation via text or text-to-speech, in lieu of providing direct contact with a live human agent.

A tactic used to ‘prove’ opponents wrong by arbitrarily choosing rare instances in which make their argument appear weak or unreliable

A headline whose main purpose is to attract the attention of readers and encourage them to click on a link to a particular webpage

A headline which alludes to new or exciting information but carefully deprives the reader of the details, provoking the reader to feel intrigued and encouraging them to bridge the distance between their new-found curiosity and promised knowledge (by clicking on the link)

According with the psychologist Leon Festinger, who enunciated the theory in 1957, cognitive dissonance occurs when people’s thoughts and feelings are inconsistent with their behavior, which results in an uncomfortable, disharmonious feeling

Mental shortcut or a ‘rule of thumb’

In the digital context, many services need personal data to function, hence, data subjects receive multiple consent requests that need answers through clicks and swipes every day. This may result in a certain degree of click fatigue: when encountered too many times, the actual warning effect of consent mechanisms is diminishing. This results in a situation where consent questions are no longer read. This is a particular risk to data subjects, as, typically, consent is asked for actions that are in principle unlawful without their consent. European Data protection Board

Explanatory causal-based, ideologically laden narratives which depict significant social events or crises as perpetrated by a group of powerful secret actors who solely follow their own nefarious interests, irrespective of the good of the masses