Who’s Sponsoring That Political Ad? There’s a Cool App That Can Tell You
- Posted on July 24, 2012 at 12:57pm by
Liz Klimas
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It’s usually pretty easy to tell which presidential candidate endorsed an ad. It can get a bit trickier to find out who exactly is financing that ad wedged between Taco Bell’s slot for its new fiesta bowl and the local lawyer looking to see if you or someone you love has been in a car accident. And what of the truth behind the claims being made in the ad?
Super PAC App logo.
The site Government Technology points to two new apps that can help you glean more information about just who produced the ad that could be influencing your vote. It notes that even though it’s required for political ads to have sponsorship information, “such information is often too cryptic to be useful.” Ad Hawk, being developed by Bob Lannon and the Sunlight Foundation, and Super PAC App, being created by MIT graduate students, can help shed light on these details.
Here’s how the Super PAC App works:
With the Super PAC App, viewers can find out with ease. While watching a political TV ad, a user can hold up her phone to identify the commercial and receive objective, third-party information. The Super PAC App allows the user to rate the ad, while understanding who and how much money is behind the ad, what claims the ad is making, and whether those claims are based on facts.
The app pulls up relevant articles related to the claims to help you verify for yourself whether they’re truthful or not.
According to the app’s website, the point of it is to help bring transparency to the 2012 election by diagnosing “what exactly … all those ads [are] trying to tell us.”
(Image: Super PAC App Vimeo screenshot)
Forbes recently featured the Super PAC App and its creators. Here’s how it all got started:
Born out of a class project at MIT’s Media Lab, the Super PAC App is the brain child of recent Harvard Kennedy School grad Jennifer Hollett and MIT Sloan grad Dan Siegel. The pair met and began working on the app in February, and are currently based out of the MIT Beehive Cooperative startup accelerator. The app is set to go live in time for the Republican National Convention at the end of August.
“I have an eternal interest in politics and business and was reading a lot about super PACs,” explained Siegel. “I remember reading an estimate that there would be $11 billion spent in this election – I remember thinking where is all this money going to? That’s the size of a small stimulus package.”
Since receiving funding from the Knight foundation last month, the startup’s programmer, Bob Caslin, has been hard at work building the app.
“Instead of just sitting there and letting the ads come at you, you have the opportunity to interact with the content,” explained Hollett.
Watch this introduction to the app:
The free, Super PAC App for iPhone is expected to go live before the Republican National Convention in August. Forbes points out the app will work for non-profit and regular campaign ads as well as super PAC.
The second app, Ad Hawk, allows users to find out more about the ad and its claims in the same fashion as the Super PAC App. According to Tech President, the director of the Sunlight Labs, Tom Lee, said political ads are almost like “augmented reality.”
“It’s trying to annotate an experience with information that they ought to have to fully understand what they’re seeing and hearing,” said Lee.
Ad Hawk is also expected to be released later in the summer and will be available for iPhone and Android users.
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Christy1
Posted on August 15, 2012 at 8:18amWell, all of us know that the success of political campaign directly depends on advertisment. But I think that most people are curious where the politicians get money for that and who sponsors their ads. As we can see, nothing can be a secret now. With a help of this Super PAC App we can see who pays for political ads. Futhermore, we only can imagine how much money are spent on political ads, especially before the elections.
Report Post »http://cashadvancesus.com/
Stoic one
Posted on July 26, 2012 at 2:27amTwo Harvard, two MIT, and the president of Howard Dean’s election team……Yep that sounds objective.
Report Post »FortunateSon
Posted on July 25, 2012 at 3:27amThe STAR WARS bobble heads say it all, are you serious? Keep moving, nothing to see here.
Report Post »Val_Dragon
Posted on July 24, 2012 at 10:13pmhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmJtaOO2etc&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Report Post »Hzurdaddy
Posted on July 24, 2012 at 8:33pmOh, goodie!! An app for a direct link to left-leaning websites with UN-biased descriptions… I can hardly wait. I believe the working title was: MoveOn Forward past MSDNC 2 Politico.
Report Post »JediKnight
Posted on July 24, 2012 at 6:03pmThere’s a WhoPaid app on the Android market as well. It’s been there since March 25th, so this app is nothing new. I have no idea who really developed the WhoPaid app (I haven’t looked that deeply into it).
Report Post »22AUTOMATIC
Posted on July 24, 2012 at 4:06pmHere’s where this is headed (see link below). I just rewatched this recently and was a little creeped out of how many parallels this flick had with today’s Big Brother/George Soros & the current media propaganda campaign (just like Harvard is attempting with this app). For about the past 45 years Harvard hasn’t exactly been known for its ethics and integrity. In fact, during that time all of the Ivy League schools haven’t benefited our country at all outside of a few science, computer advancement, and dna discoveries. If they all went bankrupt tomorrow nobody would be able to tell the difference.
http://youtu.be/9OjM_uUhr8k
When Rowdy Roddy Piper puts on the glasses he actually sees the truth behind the propaganda.
Report Post »Rothbardian_in_the_Cleve
Posted on July 24, 2012 at 1:22pmY’all need to do research on this stuff. I will not be downloading it.
It was funded by the Knight Foundation right?
Just looked up the Knight Foundation and looked at the 2011 Tax Return from their site.
Starting on Page 41 I found 17 different grants to the “Tides Center” which is the administrative part of the Tides Foundation (Soros).
No thanks. Does nobody do homework anymore? I mean when someone says that they are going to tell you how to get the truth on political adds shouldn’t that set off alarms?
Report Post »Rothbardian_in_the_Cleve
Posted on July 24, 2012 at 1:28pmCorrection: 2010 Tax Returns
Report Post »BaltimoreJoe
Posted on July 24, 2012 at 1:51pmThat’s the very first thing I thought about RothB, just who would be providing the content about whether the ad was truthful? I might try it out and if as I suspect it‘s just a Democrat scam to publish crap info I’ll delete. If it‘s not free I’ll read about it first…
There’s already a Govt PAC site where you can go and see who owns the PAC, who it sponsors, and in a lot of cases who has donated.
Report Post »JRook
Posted on July 24, 2012 at 2:39pmGood start to find out who is funding the ads, particularly the ads that based on misinformation and selective use of information. The ones that leave out context surrounding a statement. Good example are the mindless reports here about the PRESIDENT‘s comment that businesses didn’t build the infrastructure, educational system, base technologies and programs like the GI Bill and government contracts that they have benefited greatly from. Also good to know where they stuff that is referenced here comes from, as many times the sources are these BS political ads.
Report Post »Rothbardian_in_the_Cleve
Posted on July 24, 2012 at 3:43pm@Jrook,
Huh? What was that?
Report Post »eternal_vigilance
Posted on July 24, 2012 at 1:21pmThe app pulls up relevant articles related to the claims to help you verify for yourself whether they’re truthful or not. (who or what decides who/what/where is relevant?)
Report Post »According to the app’s website, the point of it is to help bring transparency to the 2012 election by diagnosing “what exactly … all those ads [are] trying to tell us.” (who or what decides “what exactly” they’re trying to tell us?)
The app is set to go live in time for the Republican National Convention at the end of August. (REALLY?)
Whose version of the truth should I anticipate or will they guarantee unadulterated facts?
Gonzo
Posted on July 24, 2012 at 1:10pmToo bad you can‘t point it at the candidate and discern what’s in his heart. Obama would be a distant memory like John Kerry.
Report Post »BaltimoreJoe
Posted on July 24, 2012 at 1:52pmUDaMan.
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