Why campaigns won't stop using our data: Because the data says we like it

[Commentary] Campaigns and political groups today have deep troves of data on us. And tech-savvy political practitioners say that while they, too, worry about data abuse, they're not about to give up figuring out clever ways to use that information. Why? Because the data shows that we actually really, really like it when they do.

A 2007 study in the journal Marketing Letters found that consumers are highly sensitive to whether we think our data is being used in ways relevant to the purpose at hand. "What seems to matter in the political space is whether it's a group I've opted into, one that I'm ideologically aligned with. If I want that group to be as powerful as possible, my concerns about privacy are probably going to be a lot less." says Daniel Kreiss, assistant professor of political communications at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.