Super PAC App for Political Advertisements

Many people have noticed that their television time is slowly turning into a huge political debate, especially as more money is being put into political advertisements since the presidential elections are rapidly approaching and will officially take place in November of 212. When viewing these advertisements, many people think to themselves about whether or not the candidate is being honest and truthful with what is being said in the commercials. Now, these people will no longer have to wonder. There is a new app that was recently designed and developed as a way of providing the truth to voters in the United States so that they know the right information about politics, digging far deeper than what is simply being said on a television advertisement.

The way that this iPhone app works is that it picks up waves from the political advertisements that are featured on the television and then matches them up in a database. Once it is matched up, the app can provide the user with information on how much money the candidate spent on the advertisement, along with the organization that chose to fund the advertisement. Users will be able to rate the advertisements and figure out whether or not the claims that have been made are actually true or not.

The Super PAC application was recently developed by Jennifer Hollett, who happens to be a recent graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School. She received assistance with the app from an MIT Sloan School of Management graduate, Dan Siegel. A simple idea that these two individuals once developed has now become a developed Super PAC App and has helped them to create their very own business, which has been named Glassy Media. The app was definitely developed at the right time, as this is a very important election year. Hollett says, “The hope is that the average voter feels more engaged and informed.”  Siegel said that the general idea of the app is to provide a tool for people to have the power, finding out more about these candidates, which will ultimately help when it comes down to making the decision as to which candidate should receive the vote.

Those who are interested in having this app can get it for free at the iTunes store. The app is funded by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and does not feature any form of advertisement at all. The idea of the foundation that funded the app is to help citizens of the United States to understand politics and elections a bit more. The vice president of journalism for the Knight Foundation, Michael Manes, has said, “With TV advertising consuming a significant amount of the resources we spend on selecting our leaders, it’s important to the future of our democracy that Americans can transparently view who funds these messages.”