Spinners, sinners and your site’s survey winners
by Glenn Alsup
I’ve always been fascinated with political elections, but the marketing side of me is often disillusioned when observing campaign advertising. It’s just too easy to spot both sides spinning their messages to meet their agendas. Clearly, this year is no exception and the partisanship seems to be more prevalent than ever.
We are constantly being bombarded with political ads from all forms of media communications (i.e. newspaper, radio, television, etc.) this time of year. On my short drive, to and from work, I often find myself alternating between different radio stations to hear the hosts spin their commentary to support their ideology. I sometimes feel that it would be empowering to have the ability to broadcast my views to the masses like the many opinionated talk show hosts on both sides of the airwaves.
One option might be to stand on a street corner and bellow-out my approval of an issue or candidate of choice. Though, I’d probably go to another town incognito since my biggest fear would be that a friend, acquaintance or colleague might see me and think I was a fanatic or something. Perhaps our family wouldn’t be invited to the next neighborhood block party!
Another option would be to become a political volunteer or spokesman, but I have never been very interested in trying to convert someone to my way of thinking. I’m very open to hearing other peoples’ perspectives and I can easily accept the fact that some people have a different opinion than mine. Unfortunately, some people use their pulpits to spin the affairs of others to meet their agenda and it’s particularly obvious with talk radio.
I mostly avoid political conversations these days since they always seem to bring out the worst in people. On one hand, I enjoy listening to political discussions whenever possible, but on the other hand, I often find myself getting aggravated with the way both sides unfairly spin their commentary. It’s an oxymoron and I wonder if other people have similar feelings?
Recently, I was speaking with someone about the accuracy of their web site’s survey data. We discussed how it’s actually pretty easy to manipulate a web site’s survey results. Here’s an example: KHOW, a popular Denver radio station web site, periodically rotates surveys on their home page. Currently, the survey is entitled “Who do you think won the debate?” There are two selectable answers and the results display percentages for each presidential candidate and their running mate.
After submitting your answer, the web site displays the current results. Unfortunately, there really isn’t any guidance regarding whether you can vote more than once. Technically, the web site appears to be using a cookie to track those who have voted before and displays only the results if you have. It’s easy to remove the web site’s “poll_id” cookie and vote again and writing a bot to monitor for any changes in the survey results and to automatically make adjustments would eliminate any manual intervention.
In the real world, this could be considered analogous to a single person being able to vote for a candidate or issue more than once and this seems like it would be a sin. Lately, there has been growing concern over voter fraud and organizations who provide voter registration information for people who don’t actually exist. In cyberspace, when you arrive on a web site you should be considered anonymous and it is important that you can remain that way. This is the conundrum with web site surveys that don’t require registration.
The moral of the story is to not believe everything you see and hear on the Internet. Keep in mind that web survey data can be subject to manipulation. If you have a web site that conducts surveys my recommendation would be to add some text clarifying that you prefer visitors not vote more than once. From a technical perspective, you should at least add some IP checking. If that isn’t enough, you can always ask your web site visitors to register before allowing them to take the survey and/or agree with any terms associated with participating in the survey.
