A review of political advertising online during the 2019 European Elections and establishing future regulatory requirements in Ireland

Ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections, the lack of regulation addressing online political advertising with the potential to undermine the integrity of the electoral process was a significant concern. Within Ireland, the Standards in Public Office Commission regulates ‘ethics, electoral, state finance and lobbying legislation’, however, there are few requirements made of political parties to disclose their funding of online political advertising. As a wider EU issue, the European Commission sought to address this lack of oversight by engaging with social media platforms to agree a voluntary Code of Practice on Disinformation. Signatories to this, including Facebook, Google and Twitter, committed to ‘ensuring transparent, fair and trustworthy online campaign activities ahead of the European elections in spring 2019’ (Kirk, N., Culloty, E., Casey, E., Teeling, L., Park, K., Kearns, C. Suiter, J. (2019). ElectCheck2019: A report on political advertising online during the 2019 European elections. Institute for Future Media and Journalism. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.18135.01449). The report here summarises the data and key findings from monitoring the levels of transparency in the political advert libraries relating to Ireland over the European Election campaign from April 18th to May 24th, 2019. The report finds that, although platforms proactively engaged with their commitments under the EU Code, inconsistencies in the companies’ approach to this result in a lack of transparency and comprehensive understanding of political and issue-based advertising online in such election campaigns.