An app aimed at transparency
When political ads begin to flood television sets across America, many viewers reach for the remote. One recent Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) grad hopes they’ll start grabbing their phones, driven not by annoyance or boredom, but curiosity. Super PAC App, the brainchild of Jennifer Hollett, M.C./M.P.A. ’12, and her MIT classmate Dan Siegel, gives voters information about the money and motives behind presidential campaign ads with just a single touch on an iPhone. By recording a snippet of audio from a television ad as it plays, a user can see who paid for the ad, how much money that political group has raised and spent so far, and how truthful the claims in the ad are (via links to outside, nonpartisan news sources). “We want to educate and engage the average voter,” Hollett said. “We hope it’ll make people, instead of shutting off the TV, figure out what’s going on.” Television and, to...