The Scholar: Carter Cleary ‘25 

The Project: The Effects of Microtargeting and the American Privacy Rights Act 

The Essential Question: “My paper covered the experiment I conducted assessing the effectiveness of the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA), a bill in Congress that will, if passed, severely restrict the data farming capabilities of tech companies. One piece of data that will still be allowed to be collected under the APRA is non-precise geolocation data (Congression Research Service). This encompasses zip codes, towns, counties, etc. For my experiment, I made two political ads on a sample topic and assessed the hypothetical effects of the APRA with statistical analysis and models, seeing if the geographic demographics of participants (whether one was a rural, suburban, or urban voter and the state one resides in) could be used to predict their response to the political ad. My experiment concluded that for a population similar to the one in my sample, the APRA will be effective, as the two non-precise geographic data points used in the models were not statistically significant. The experiment did reveal, however, that suburban voters are more easily manipulated than non-suburban voters, an interesting and valuable insight in a country whose most recent election cycle saw $16 billion spent on races largely decided by suburban voters according to U.S. News & World Report.“

Surprising Discovery: “That I could predict how people would vote on a topic.”

Biggest Challenge: “Sample size.”

Tip for future scholars: “Choose something you’re passionate about that has not been researched thoroughly.“