University Report: Cambridge Analytica Data Misuse Case Analysis

This report analyzes the Cambridge Analytica scandal, focusing on the misuse of Facebook user data. It examines the environmental scanning, including the database and social media sources used for data collection. The report details the results and analysis of the scandal, exploring the role of Aleksandr Kogan and the app 'thisisyourdigitallife'. It assesses the impact on various stakeholders, including shareholders, advertisers, employees, and the government, highlighting the implications of digital policy and the timeline of events. The report also discusses policies, corporate social responsibility, and recommendations for rectification. The analysis covers the number of media articles, social media analysis, and concludes with key findings and references. The report aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the scandal's complexities and its far-reaching consequences.

CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Environmental scanning..................................................................................................................4
Database.......................................................................................................................................4
Sources of social media...............................................................................................................4
Results and analysis.........................................................................................................................5
Shareholders................................................................................................................................6
Advertisers...................................................................................................................................7
Employees....................................................................................................................................7
Government.................................................................................................................................8
Communities................................................................................................................................8
The implication of digital policy.....................................................................................................9
Timeline of events of Cambridge analytica on a Lifecycle diagram.............................................11
Number of media articles...............................................................................................................12
Analysis of social media................................................................................................................12
Policies...........................................................................................................................................13
Corporate Social Responsibility................................................................................................13
Code of Conduct........................................................................................................................14
Whistleblower policy.................................................................................................................14
Rectification...................................................................................................................................15

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Part shut down...........................................................................................................................15
Data limit...................................................................................................................................15
Email or username.....................................................................................................................15
Recommendation...........................................................................................................................16
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................17
References......................................................................................................................................18

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Introduction
Political consulting firm Cambridge analytica did the work for the campaign of Trump and
harvested raw data of 87 million profiles of Facebook users. This is a complicated web of
relationships of the trump campaign, Cambridge analytica, and Facebook, as they tied together.
Data of 87 million Facebook users exposed to a researcher of Cambridge analytica that worked
for the campaign of Trump. This is the biggest ever data breaches crisis. This has been done by
building powerful software to influence and predict choices at the box of the ballot (Gonzalez,
2011).
This is a scandal of Facebook more than a Cambridge analytica. In this scandal, personal
information has been taken without authorization to prepare a system that could profile US
voters individually, in order to target them with a personalized political advertisement (Peruzzi,
2018).
In this crisis, data collected by an app name called thisisyourdigitallife. Aleksandr Kogan builds
this. In this app, thousands of users were paid to take a personality test and agree to have their
data collected for academic use (Gurumurthy, 2017).
Platform policy of Facebook allowed only gathering of facts of friends to expand knowledge of
the user in the application and lined it being sold on or used for marketing (Tuttle, 2018). Data
collection methods, analysis of results, a recommendation has been covered in the following
discussion.

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Environmental scanning
There are two methods of collecting the data primary and secondary. The secondary method has
been used in this report for collecting the data. For Cambridge analytica scandal sources of data
collection like database, sources of social media, resources/websites outlined below.
Database
For easily manage and access updates information is collected from the database. The database is
the source of expanding the information with records. This is relevant in large mainframe
systems.
Details for analysis of Cambridge analytica scandal has been taken from database like Google
Scholar, News articles, etc.
Google scholar source – Cambridge Analytica, self-regulating investigation and domestic
attention.
News article – Facebook’s latest controversy has echoes of Cambridge analytica.
Sources of social media
Social mass media sources are computer-based skills that ease the allocation of thoughts,
information, and ideas by building networks virtually.
Details for analysis of Cambridge analytica scandal has been covered from social media sources
like social news, sites of bookmarking.
Social news – The guardian has been taken for the Cambridge analytica crisis.
Websites/resources

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There are many websites/resources for appropriate research. This depends on the type of content.
Sources of websites are a network for good, Department of environmental conservation.
Resources - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/17/facebook-cambridge-
analytica-kogan-data-algorithm
Results and analysis
A scholar from Cambridge university name called Alexander Kogan established an application
‘thisismydigitallife’. This application offered users $1-$2 to yield a makeup quiz. For this, users
had to permission to give the entrance of app to their Facebook profiles and their contacts. This
task was advertised to remote staffs of freelance on Powered Turk, a crowdsourcing operational
marketplace measured by Amazon. More than 270000 users took the quiz (Bichler & Nitzan,
2018). This application was able to enter all profile of more than 50 million friend accounts
allowed by default. For this researcher, Alexander Kogan took a license from Facebook, ‘for
purpose of an investigation only’.
The party-political data organization Cambridge analytica was co-founded by Republican donor
Robert Mercer. This organization has financed $7 million for Kogan work with the agreement to
receive data. Cambridge analytica handled the data of users that were matched with the archives
of others to build the profiles on millions of U.S. electorates and effect their performance, using
psychographic modeling methods. This crisis affects stakeholders around the world. The interest
of the stakeholders were broken. The policy of privacy regarding stakeholders was broken.
Various expectations and standards of stakeholders were breeches in this scandal. Several major
Facebook stakeholders call for Mark Zuckerberg to step down as chairperson. Facebook has the
following stakeholders group that are Advertisers, members/users, employees, government, etc.

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Shareholders
Facebook has misplaced more than $60 billion in marketplace capitalization after reports about
Cambridge analytica crisis. After Cambridge analytica crisis shareholders called for alteration,
with a pair of suggestions they faith will finish up on the opinion poll at the conference of the
organization.
One of the shareholder New York State Common Retirement Fund, which holds more than 6.7
million shares of Facebook. They have one of the largest nation’s pension resources. They have
filed a suggestion in December with desires Facebook to develop better plans for addressing
election intervention and provide a report to “reviewing the efficacy of the enforcement of its
terms of service related to content policies.”
“The organization got to come clean,” said Michael Connor, executive director of Information
company initiatives and open media, a not-for-profit that everything on publically accountable
capitalizing and stockholder commitment. “It’s in chaos.”
Open MIC helped draft the proposal of the shareholder. The Arjuna Capital files this.
“Content policies appear reactive, not proactive,” the stockholder proposal reads. “As such,
Facebook is embroiled in a string of controversies that have demonstrated the potential broad for
misuse of its platform to spread lies propaganda, and hate.”
Facebook has more than 1.6 billion lively users. These are the most important stakeholders of
Facebook. Users have made Facebook the most important social media. After the Cambridge
analytica crisis, users loosed the surety about protecting their data. Facebook breached the policy
of privacy that reduced a large number of users. After Cambridge, analysis scandal user loosed
the privacy of their information. The users are not interested in the convenience and ease of

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information. This scandal has made the users interface harder and more insecure. After this
scandal user gives priority to other social media networks compare Facebook.
Advertisers
The chief source of Facebook’s revenue is advertisers. These are the second most important
stakeholders of Facebook. Advertisers are the main basis of income for Facebook. This assembly
of stakeholders is significant as they directly influence the financial status of an organization
(Hernates, 2013).
The interest of these stakeholders affected at the large number as they have an indirect
connection to the users. They were not able to provide an effective and efficient service of
advertising. After this scandal, options for advertisers were lesser. The profits of the advertisers
went down, as they were not able to target the maximum and a specific number of users.
Facebook was not up to the mark for addressing the interest of these stakeholders (Czischke,
2018).
Employees
These are the third most important stakeholders of Facebook. Employees are those who
responsible for improving, creating, and managing Facebook social media services online for
advertisers and users (Wolfson, 2017). The interest of the employees includes the environment of
work, compensation, and career development. In this scandal, employees have loosed their
position of working, designations, a culture of working. Opportunities for their career
development have become slower as the organization loosed their position of stand-in social
media. The work of the employees got slower as they were not able to their best. This scandal
slower down the growth and expansion of the services of workers. In this scandal, employees

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loosed a large number of advertisers and users for which they work. Facebook at good level did
not provide accommodation to employees. The employees of Facebook did not get enough
wages and they were hearted at large level. In this scandal, they were not able to get enough
priority to compare to other stakeholders. Employees of Facebook was not good enough to
perform compared to its competitors (Siles, 2012).
Government
This is the fourth most important stakeholder of the organization. The government has rules,
regulations, and laws on social media business of Facebook. In this scandal, government affected
at the large level, as the policies that include regulations were not followed (Hancock, 2014). The
Facebook breached negotiating and collaborating with the government. Government of all the
country affected at large level in this scandal. This scandal influence the interest and regulatory
requirement of the government.
For example in the case of China Facebook not remains to contribute in agendas of education as
an approach to prove the government with the open marketplace to the accessible social system.
Communities
These stakeholders affected by the organization as they received the least priority. They have the
perception of influencing the advertisers and members (Fairclough, 2011). Critics argue that
internet.org violates net neutrality and this is the other mode to sponsor the corporation’s online
social system over opponents. The strategy of Facebook was weak in filling the interest of
communities like an assembly of stakeholders.

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The implication of digital policy
This has located the performances, farm duties of Facebook and other organization under
scrutiny. This was considered as separate trades, the internet industry and the mass media have
now converged around the model data.
In the exchange for using the services, users provide their own statistics. In large numbers, data
were used for marketing and advertising purpose. For sample, in 2017, Facebook’s revenue from
the promotion was close to $40 billion. In the same year income from promotion crossed over
$27 billion.
Data for harvested has more uses. Data of customer is using by Amazon to target the deals. Data
of customers are using by Uber to develop autonomous vehicles. Organization of Hardware are
also collecting the data this was showed in recent WikiLeaks revelations show that a
manufacturer of smart TV was allegedly collecting data on viewing habits of users (Player,
2019).
This ‘gold rush’ for statistics means that any risk associated, challenges, or issues related to the
data model of industries are aggregate exponentially. These queries relate to the accountability of
mediators regarding the collection of data, and rights of operators over their private data
(Matthew, 2018).
There were two main actors were involved in the Cambridge analytica case the third parties
(Political campaigns, Cambridge analytica, the researcher), and network (Rosenberg, 2018). This
raises several queries. Why did the API of Facebook’s permit the automatic gathering of
statistics of friends, and how will possible breaches of statistics be dealt with? If the terms
among third parties and Facebook were breached, who is responsible?

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Misuse of information, Breaches of data, and users breaches are connected essentially. Other
organizations and Facebook gather a huge amount of statistics. The organization not only
archives the ‘likes’ but also information geographical based on Wi-Fi signal or GPS statistics
from apps and websites which the user log onto via their login Facebook permits and any
material of contact that user allows access to Facebook. ‘Profiles of shadow’ of nonusers were
created by Facebook to infer from other statistics. The key criticisms leveled against authorities
and internet organizations relates to the large amount (Port, 2019).
Ethical and legal questions also rise, linked to how the data analysis and data used. Although
much of the criticism about the practices of the industry, as most of the collection of data was
done from the operators themselves.

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Timeline of events of Cambridge analytica on a Lifecycle
diagram